Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

Do you have to go into management to continue progressing upwards in pay and influence? I know this isn't the case at some companies (e.g. Google), but is it rare or common to progress as an individual contributor?

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

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

Is becoming a specialist rather than a generalist the answer?

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?

For me, there's the obvious path into management but being good at your trade does not imply you'll be good at management.

I think there's a more subtle path too: consultancy. I particularly like consultancy because you can start off basically as a freelance developer and gradually raise your profile into project management (if you own a consultancy team) or architecture design or CTO-type problems. It's much easier to get away from the code whilst still avoiding the management trap.

Of course, that assume the need to move away from the code but I know I don't learn new technologies quite as well as I did 10 years ago and that'll only get worse over the next 10-20. Also, as you get older, you generally need to find higher-value activities and a monkey coder is not top of that pile.

Something to keep in mind is that this industry is aging and maturing alongside us. You can't use historical precedent for understanding unprecedented events.

My personal hope is that the software developer monoculture (young dudes with ancestors in Europe or some parts of Asia) will mature into the kind of diverse profession where people aren't any more surprised by a female coder than they would be by a female orthodontist.