Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

This is a great response. As someone who's approaching my mid-30s, I can identify with a lot of it.

I'm at an inflection point these days on whether I want to push forward on the management path or go for the third path, as you mentioned above.

The management path seems to be the path of least resistance, but getting into the politics of management is unappealing. Also the level of competition for management jobs is at another level. As an engineer, I'm used to having jobs thrown at me left and right, but it seems like engineering managers compete for jobs quite a bit more. It feels risky to go from something with high demand to something with clearly much lower demand.

The third path is very appealing from a satisfaction standpoint, but clearly a lot riskier, especially for someone US-based who needs better healthcare as they get older. Also the feast or famine nature of consulting can be a little brutal. I think a combination of consulting plus products is the best bet, but it can take a while to get that going.

First off, brilliantly cogent post. I am getting to the stage where the latest fancy framework doesn't really seem as much of a win but more meta-bullshit to deal with.

> The problem for some people is that these kinds of more generalized roles put you in charge of systems that do not have the sort of clear-cut deterministic behavior you remember from your programming days.

Can you expand a bit on this? What do you mean by "clear-cut deterministic behaviour" ?

One data point: a good friend of mine joined [large rdbms vendor] out of college about 25 years ago and rose through the ranks in the rdbms engine group. He's now one of the senior people who knows where all the bodies are buried in the code, the forgotten bugs that resulted in the current weird algorithm in the xyz module, etc. I have no idea what he makes, but when I tried to hire him during the first internet bubble they slapped the golden handcuffs on him. These days he's rich from 25 years of stock options.

Your comp definitely plateaus if you remain an individual contributor. You become more valuable, and more highly compensated, by managing and/or mentoring people, helping evolve the technology to match the needs of the business and to find new markets, touching customers and revenue, etc. In my opinion this is required from all senior level technical people in the software industry.

44, and yes, it's a concern on the horizon that there might be ageism - but so far I'm not seeing it.

> Do you have to go into management to continue progressing upwards in pay and influence

That depends on how much pay and influence you want. At some point, influence means managing. If not in title, certainly in actions.

> Is there a plateau in pay? Yes and no. If you stay in the same qualification range at a given company, your pay will stagnate modulo annual increases. Move up or out to improve.

> Is there a drop in pay switching jobs after a certain number of years experience because places are looking for 5+ instead of 20+?

There can be. If you can, trade the drop for something you care about that advances your career. E.g. 2 jobs ago I took a pay-cut, but that translated into being given the responsibility to build a new team from scratch. It was something I wanted enough to take the cut, and it was a great learning experience. I subsequently traded back for money ;)

> Are older devs not looking for new jobs because they have families and want more stability/are focussed elsewhere?

Can't speak for all - I usually pick jobs I like, at companies I like, for pay I'm OK with. As long as the job comes with growth opportunities, I don't look for new jobs because I'm enjoying what I do.

If I don't, I'll probably switch.

But yes, I've also settled down a bit more. I wouldn't root up my family on a whim and move to a different continent any more, unless it was a stellar opportunity. Or maybe I'm not settled down, just pickier.

> And lastly: if you're in your late 30s, 40s, 50s, what are you doing at your job? What are the older people in your workplace doing?

I write code, and am trying to move into a bit more of a lead position, because that's what I care about. In general, the ones who want to write code do so. The ones who want to manage do so. And we've got people that are significantly older than I am.

In short, I wouldn't worry too much about being too old just yet :) Just make sure you keep your skills sharp.