I’m 34 and tired of participating in the 13-17/hr rat race.

I’m looking to go into coding but the legitimate programs are expensive.

Does anyone know of any jobs that pay well and don’t require a high skill level?

Or

Does anyone know of a coding program that will teach you coding and how to get hired that is not thousands of dollars?

Do not go into coding. It is a dead end. Consider jobs that take a year or less of schooling to get employed. Look at community colleges for cheaper programs that are designed for specific jobs (culinary, nursing, mechanical). This almost ensures you'll be hired after spending the 5-10K. And likely you can continue working at the same time. Win-win. Coding requires why too many technologies now to even be considered employable.

And no, I'm not preserving my job or eliminating competition, this field generally sucks and I am getting out.

I am teetering on retirement. I have worked developing software since 1989. The layoffs, difficult interviews, lack of job stability and after the age of 40 (too old), 100,000 new CS graduates or more per year, and now ChatGPT or AI is knocking on the door. I will steer my children into a trade or hands on field. I was really lucky to only be without work for just 2 months in my life. Good luck people! I mean that. I’m out

Please do not go into coding. Like the other poster suggested, nursing and the trades are better options. The job market for entry-level developers without a 4-year degree in Computer Science is near non-existent as there are many more experienced developers in the job market. There are some coding boot camp graduates who are doing ok and are employed because they got in at entry-level in 2019-2021 and have managed to prove their value.

If you think coding doesn’t require a high skill level, you’re in for a rude awakening

I've been a software developer now for over 50 years. I started in the industry way back in 1973 when most coders had to learn machine language. It's been an interesting ride. As most people will tell you today, the job market is flooded right now and not a real good time to jump in. Some people say that AI is going to replace all the current coders - so don't do it. My take on the situation is that things will eventually improve. They always have. As for AI, it just means that the methods of software development will change, not the demand for people with good analytical skills. How are your analytical skills? Just ask yourself if you are good in Math and if you like doing math problems. If yes, you likely have the skills to be a software developer. My advice, if you want to go forward, would be to take some basic on-line courses. UDEMY is a good choice. Learn the basics and then do a small application for a local business. Offer it for free as long as they agree to be a job reference for you after you deliver it. By doing that you give yourself some valuable experience, as well as have something to write about on your resume. Good luck!

Definitely look at the trades...tech is over-saturated. Selecting a field with certifications can make you valuable. Think home appraisers or inspectors, air traffic controllers, HVAC technicians, insurance underwriters, fraud examiners, etc. Healthcare is another great option as job demand is very high -- imaging technicians, health aides, phlebotomists, etc.

You’re going to have to invest in expensive training if you want to get from zero to hero in a short time. But before you do that make sure coding is for you. Try the free or inexpensive offerings from websites like freecodecamp.org or scrimba.com or codecademy.com. If you’re an outlier who picks up these complex topics with ease, then look at more formal training. But if it’s a struggle, this kind of job isn’t for you. If you had jumped in ten years ago you’d have had a chance. But with the glut of bootcamp grads in the market looking for their first job, you really need to wow to get an interview if you’re new to coding. Sorry.

Not sure what pay you are looking for but I am currently working as a glorified AutoCAD tech for an AV company. Basically I take a floor plan and I place dots on a grid that represent speakers and send out a quote. I've been here for 2 and a half years, didn't know CAD past what you can learn on youtube. And I made $33/hr starting. I do have an engineering degree, but my wife does the same role with a masters in geology and no cad background. I recently completed my Certified technology specialist, which consisted of reading a 500 page book from Amazon and taking the Avixa certification exam that cost around $500. Immediately after this i updated my job sites and now I am looking at jobs that are paying 90k-130k in the Dallas area. These jobs range in titles from Broadcast engineer to Audio Video lead installer and so on. But having just this one certification is potentially going to bump my salary up to 50%. I may be optimistic considering how long people are job hunting, but I'm going to ride the motivation high from passing and work on pushing another cert out. My current job workload has me done by noon some days and is low stress, so while I have the time I'm going to keep studying and push my value up.

Learn cyber security - penetration testing specifically. Which will require Linux and Python coding skills.

Other than that, coding wise - you can still to code, but try to launch your own idea. A coding job is hard to come by today

A lot of people have said not to get into coding but it depends where you want to get into there are still good small to medium companies looking to hire someone and not necessarily so senior.

A good option is to get into some kind of IT job like others mentioned, customer support (where I started) and use the time you have to learn what you need to know for whatever developer path you take.

This path is important but these days a bit more generalised like what is a full stack developer and a front end developer. My advice here is to learn the fundamentals get comfortable making stuff and if you're not fixated on which programming language or developer tools to use then Ruby and Ruby on Rails is a great way to getting into the web development world (not to mention a thriving R/RoR community).

If you can improve something at work, develop a tool that make your colleagues lives easier this is a good way to get recgonised but you may also be in a role that offers no progression so use the time to skill up as much as possible.

Set yourself some time each day to learn and this will not be an in-depth exercise at first just skim through the material let your brain get used to the information then take a break and come back to what your trying to learn you will find after a few goes like this your learning rate will increase.

Build stuff! As you learn start to create things coding is as much about stamina as it is skill get better and faster at doing the basics and you will unlock your potential to do great things this is a fact (or you stumble and fall all the time).

Get involved in an open source project on github, build a website and web app for a local small business there are plenty of ways to keep the learning and progression alive for example I have a few personal projects some freelance some not to give me something to focus on outside of my day to day.

The market is a strange place but it depends where you're looking if you're going to try and compete with hundreds of thousands of other people in a corporate environment its going to be tough but if you look for the smaller businesses, the mediums sized units you will stand a better chance of finding work (and those kinds of roles don't always pop-up in job ads you need to do some research of your local and surrounding area, approach businesses for freelance work and/or look for an job openings they may have).

Don't be put off a lot of naysayers on here. DO learn coding but accept that it will be something on the side until you get confident and skilled enough to take a leap into a junior developer role (or freelance like I did then went contracting and eventually landed a perm job).

Passion is important so seek out those YouTube videos of developers sharing their knowledge some great stuff on there that really inspired me when I had a career midlife crisis (I was going to walk away from coding and IT as a whole). Good luck you got this, pack your diary slot in 1 hour a day.

If you’re looking for a 9 to 5 job that doesn’t require work at nights or weekends, don’t go into software engineering.

If you want to do software, do something highly specialized that most normal programmers have no interest in doing, like DevOps or Site Reliability. The barrier to entry is still very high, because those generally aren't entry level positions, but they are more recession proof because no one know or wants to learn what they do, because most programmers think it's super boring.

Ask ChatGPT for some ideas, based on your skillset and interests and personality.

You can then try connecting with an employment agency to help get your resume out to companies they partner with, based on the types of jobs you want to pursue.

Join yearup

I think if I were you, I'd consider roles in customer support for tech companies or entry-level data entry type stuff. Alternatively, sales can be a good entry point if you have the personality for it! As for coding, there are free or affordable platforms like freeCodeCamp and Codecademy to get started

AI is already starting to kill basic coding

I have a friend who did a coding bootcamp pre-covid, probably 2018-19 and they found a job after a few months and are still in tech now. Another friend did the exact same bootcamp in 2023, and they haven't had any luck finding a job.

The job market isn't great, there's an oversaturation of junior developers and some companies hiring juniors will only look at people with uni degrees (back in the day, they'd prioritize, but now with so many applicants, they'll likely pass you over completely for someone with a uni degree). And that's if they're hiring juniors in the first place, which, as other commenters have said, not many are.

You might look into companies like "Catalyte" if you're interested in learning coding. You take an aptitude test through them that scores your likelihood of success and if you have a good score they'll more or less train you on their dime and get you a job on the other side. There is nuance to it, but worth taking a look.

First of all, do some free coding courses online. It's really important to understand if you like coding, and if you have any affinity towards it. If you really get into it, love all the cools stuff you can do, then by all means, do a bootcamp and go from there.
My brother did a 4 month one in Spain and got a junior job pretty quickly. 4 years or so later and he's got a mid-level job at a huge mobile gaming company and doing pretty well - and crucially much better than if he'd stayed doing what he did. But the key thing is that he really enjoyed coding once he got into.
If you don't get it/like it/love it pretty early, then I probably wouldn't bother. It's a saturated market and unless you love it you won't get far. I've interviewed 100s of people and almost always hire the people who live and breathe it.

I'm biased because I'm a network engineer and work on firewalls but I would never discourage anyone from IT. I'll say that I might discourage you from coding specifically considering your starting point as it is a single pillar of IT and IT and coding is in a weird place. My recommendation would be something along the lines of an entry level security cert (ISC2, Security +) and try to just land a job as a SOC analyst or help desk or whatever you need to do to get in.
Then get Linux+, CCNA and learn python. What I'm seeing most with simple coders is just making tools or scripts to be better and faster at your real job.
In all honesty if you are just looking for a "job" as a coder or even IT plan on making $20 an hour for another 10 years until you just hopefully accrue skills on the job. If you love working on tech and you have a home lab and work on your on projects and you're making Git commits everyday or doing bug bounties then the world is your oyster and you can climb as fast as you want.
If you're open to just IT then you should be looking at high level certs within a few years CCNP, AWS Solutions Architect, CEH. There are endless options. If you want software then it might be to the point of either just become an expert on your own or go get a CS degree.