'What really matters is my progress now,' says Morgan, 'how I'm doing compared with a year or a month ago-and reaching my potential with the time I have. All her coworkers are more experienced but supportive. But she forged ahead, and her skills landed her an entry-level job at Flixster, a website where users watch and rate movies. According to and, this is the average annual salary of these various, coding-related, roles: Computer Programmer - 64,481. Generally, however, the coder’s career path pays very well. In her group of 25 students, Morgan was one of a few who were older than 30. The coder’s salary average varies greatly by role and industry.

She thought about a career in computers but assumed that 'to succeed, you had to have learned to program at age 11.' Then she found Hackbright Academy, a coding boot camp that teaches software development to women.

Computer Programming seems like a field for whiz-kid hackers, not a 30-something Stanford University Libraries archivist who says she was a 'hard-core English major in college.' But hoping to pick up technical skills she could use on the job, Aimee Morgan, 35, of Mountain View, California enrolled in an online course to learn Python, a popular programming language-and loved it.

How to become a coder