You did the right thing by providing the information requested. You can help them more by introducing them to older programmers and programmers who have made a career switch from another field to development.
Personally, I have changed career fields multiple times. What has worked for me is to build a bridge between what I know (the domain I was working in) and where I want to go next (targeted market).
For example, the lawyer can easily migrate to legal tech company and still be considered very valuable. Similarly, ATC can easily migrate to related industry tech company. Actually, their domain expertise will be considered valuable even now without programming knowledge in sales, sales engineering, and consulting roles for domain related tech companies and that might be a bridge worth walking on. Once they have entered tech space, it will get easier to build network and relationship and migrate toward development roles. This also avoids the need to restart from the bottom.
One thing I will suggest not to do is to quit their current jobs and go do some programming bootcamp/academic program. Their domain expertise is valuable as long as they are in the domain so leverage that to find a role in tech company focusing on their domain.
Personally, I have changed career fields multiple times. What has worked for me is to build a bridge between what I know (the domain I was working in) and where I want to go next (targeted market).
For example, the lawyer can easily migrate to legal tech company and still be considered very valuable. Similarly, ATC can easily migrate to related industry tech company. Actually, their domain expertise will be considered valuable even now without programming knowledge in sales, sales engineering, and consulting roles for domain related tech companies and that might be a bridge worth walking on. Once they have entered tech space, it will get easier to build network and relationship and migrate toward development roles. This also avoids the need to restart from the bottom.
One thing I will suggest not to do is to quit their current jobs and go do some programming bootcamp/academic program. Their domain expertise is valuable as long as they are in the domain so leverage that to find a role in tech company focusing on their domain.