I don't think it's vastly different from someone younger who wanted to shift career into tech without previous experience.
I would recommend him taking one or a few bootcamp classes to bring him up to speed, maybe focus on one area in particular (e.g. web development) then find a smaller dev shop where he could come in and support in a junior support role to start with and then take it from there. Maybe develop a few pet projects to build his portfolio in parallel.
It's not impossible but maybe manage his expectations a little bit that he's going to have to start more or less from scratch.
A small dev shop in my view is a company (1-20 employees) that typically develops bespoke applications as turnkey projects, either from scratch or leveraging some existing stack (e.g. Wordpress applications, Salesforce applications, etc.)
I would look for companies that describe themselves as:
- Website design agencies
- Creative agencies (look at their webpage if they also have development and not purely design)
- Design & Development agencies
You should be able to find a handful just through a Google Maps search.
Reach out to them and ask if they could use some junior development support, and if there's a particular area they need support in.
I would recommend him taking one or a few bootcamp classes to bring him up to speed, maybe focus on one area in particular (e.g. web development) then find a smaller dev shop where he could come in and support in a junior support role to start with and then take it from there. Maybe develop a few pet projects to build his portfolio in parallel.
It's not impossible but maybe manage his expectations a little bit that he's going to have to start more or less from scratch.