Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

In the Valley / consumer focused apps - they are often focused on both very young target users - AND - very new frameworks and technologies. Plus they work insane hours.

I worked in Software in Telecom as a young man, and I was surrounded by middle aged geniuses, I felt useless.

My buddy worked at a big consulting firm doing .com stuff, he was a primary lead.

So yes, it has a lot do with products, the industry, how fast things change etc..

I enjoy the frothiness of tech, but it's a career danger.

I was self-motivated to constantly learn, and had no trouble doing it... when I was young. It was the right profession for me then, when I had the interest and passion.

After a while, though, much of it starts to seem the same. The towering vistas that were once full of mystery, adventure, and discovery turned in to endless plateaus of rinse and repeat learning of technical minutia and buzzword tech of the day. I also developed lots of new interests, and started to want to have an actual life outside of work.

So then I very consciously decided not to strive to excel in my field anymore, because it would just take way too much of my time, which I'd rather spend doing other things. Then, before too long, I burnt out, and took a long break, eventually coming back to the field because I burnt through all my savings and needed money. This happened a bunch of times, with ever longer breaks in between.

Every time, I was able to brush up on the technology knowledge and skills that I needed to get a job, but I was never as excited about it as I was when I was young, and actually started to dread working with it, as I found it mind-numbingly boring.

I should have definitely completely switched careers after my first major burnout, but I didn't, and I've come back to the field again and again instead. This has definitely been a mistake, but here I am. I'm good enough at what I do to get work, and to even impress my managers... while I still haven't burnt out this time around and am still capable of putting in the overtime to get a lot done. But it's just a matter of time until I burn out again, and this pattern of not working for extended periods of time looks horrible on my resume, I haven't learned nearly as much as I would have had I stayed employed the whole time, and my career is nowhere near as advanced as that of people who can hack full-time employment long-term.

I don't think my case is typical, as most people seem to stay employed continuously in the long run. But I can't, and I feel I'm way too old for a career change now... and, anyway, I suspect whatever it is that I'd switch careers to would get boring before long and I'd burn out again. My interests are far too varied and I can't stick to doing any one thing for long before getting bored.

This is not to mention all of the endless corporate bullshit one has to put up with at work. Some people are really career-oriented and can deal with it. I'm not.

But what has kept me constantly improving is trying out many diffent things over the years: aside from having all of the roles of a software team at one point, I've also been a researcher, coach, consultant and CEO. Also in non tech-related fields.

But now I'm again back to being a programmer. It's the position where you can make the biggest difference.

It turns out she's amazing because she knows how business works and how to get things done efficiently and what the business really wants from her: Quick, stable code.

Others we've hired that didn't have this skill have not fared nearly so well. I'm definitely looking for that kind of thing in future hires now.

But, they did acknowledge it. And they're now making design decisions to facilitate the web as an application platform, rather than intentionally trying to make application development as difficult as possible to dissuade it. So now we've got WebAssembly and tomorrow or the day after we will have any language anyone wants to use being used. In that arena, Javascript will get pantsed and laughed out of the room. It will probably happen with pretty amazing speed, as there are legions of developers who have been holding their breath for this for 20 years.