Graduating at 28 with with a CS degree - Effect on finding a job?

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
1

**If you hate reading long posts, skip the first paragraph. You wont miss out of anything important.

I’m 23. This Spring I will be graduating with an Associate degree in Automotive Technology. When I was at the traditional college freshman age, I never would have dreamed that this is where life would have taken me 5 years down the road. I had plans of going in to some kind of STEM field when I was younger, I just wasn’t 100% sure which one. I was working on getting the core classes out of the way at a local CC when I lost my mom. That had a huge negative impact on me. I could no longer focus on school, and ultimately dropped ALL of my classes to prevent failing them. I ended up moving nearly 300 miles from home, where I decided to start fresh. I knew I had to do something, but I couldn’t muster the will power or the discipline to complete a 4 year degree in CS, or CE, or EE, or whatever (Again, I had never fully decided what I wanted to do in the first place). What I did have was a hobby, working on cars. And there just so happened to be one of the best Automotive Technology programs in the country about 35 miles from me. So in attempt to jump start a life here, I enrolled and within about two months I began both working as an automotive technician and going to school full time studying automotive technology.

After all of these years, I can honestly say that I am now in a place where I want to go to a University and get a 4 year degree and really step into a career that I would love and be proud of. About 3 weeks ago I signed up for Edx and started Harvard’s CS50x course, which has been awesome so far. That’s all I do when I get home from work. I’m leaning toward getting my degree in CS, but I’m worried about one thing. Looking into the future and seeing myself as a 28 year old graduate (rough guess at the age considering I’ll be working full time to put myself through the program and going to night classes part time - combined with the fact that I have completed the core classes already) who has no experience in that field outside of schooling, I’m wondering how I would look compared to other applicants who may have the same amount of experience but at 22 instead of 28. Is this not even a big deal? Maybe I’m just over thinking it. I’d love to hear opinions, especially coming from someone who hires people in the CS industry.

Thanks for reading.

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You should be alright, although it will most certainly be different.

You are graduating with the same degree as the 22-year-olds, but you’re a few years older. So that means you know as much as they do at the very least, if not more. Maturity is generally valued in employees, and most people are not particularly mature by age 22. If you work full-time in a position that’s at least somewhat related to CS while in school (should be possible to find especially as a CS student), that’s actually a huge boost as well.

There is a substantial subset of CS employment (social media biz dev/web app work, mostly in the startup scene) that actually values immaturity and likes to hire youth over older people. Your chances of being employed there are substantially lower, but take that as a blessing in disguise because it’s not a place any mature person would want to be anyways.

The disadvantages of having a career that is 6 years behind that of the younger graduates are self-evident, but it’s not an insurmountable issue at all.