I&#x27;ve done what you&#x27;re doing about five times, and it&#x27;s always exciting and new. I&#x27;m 54 with no degree or formal qualifications of any sort, and am currently responsible for all third-party JavaScript and browser extensions at a strong young company in San Francisco.<p>Free advice:  Unless you are planning to specialize in something PHP-based like Drupal, you may want to de-emphasize PHP in your resume and employment history.  Start learning Python right now and double down on your JavaScript, since you&#x27;ll find it on the back end (Node.js) as well as the front end.  And never say you&#x27;re the master of nothing; there is at least one thing that you&#x27;re the best in the world at, and you have to say what that is and why they should hire you to do it.<p>If you are not already completely comfortable with git and GitHub, now would be a fine time to start by contributing to open-source projects or starting your own.<p>Trust your gut when interviewing; if it feels the place is run a bunch of 22-year-old frat boys out of privileged private universities, it&#x27;s not going to work out well for you.<p>One successful approach is to look for a situation where women are thriving in engineering roles.  Why? Because much of the extra stuff an older individual contributor without a degree will have to do is the same extra stuff that all women face every day.