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

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

#141

Post by LargeWu »

pmoriarty wrote: post #83
maxxxxx wrote: post #7

I am 50 and I do OK. I also see people around my age and older who do well too. It seems to me that a lot of people who get filtered out in their 30s should never have been in the profession either for lack of motivation, interest or talent. If you are not self motivated to constantly evolve you have a problem. Moreso than in a lot of other professions.

"If you are not self motivated to constantly evolve you have a problem. Moreso than in a lot of other professions." 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…

That describes me exactly. Coincidentally, I turned 40 a few months ago.

I took my current job with the goal of transitioning into a leadership role, either product or management. I was walking into a situation where I knew people already here and was hoping to leverage that. Those people left a few months after I started, and now I'm kind of stuck on an island. I've approached my current boss but he's completely uninterested in promoting any sort of career development.

Bottom line is I'm burnt out, depressed, and bored out of my mind. The idea of learning Yet Another Web Framework fills me with dread (I'm currently doing Node/React stuff and hating it), not because I don't think I can learn the tech, but because it's no longer fulfilling in any kind of personal or professional sense.

So, I really don't know where I'm going, or what I'm going to be when I grow up.

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

#142

Post by bostik »

bdcravens wrote: post #93
lliamander wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let me ask: how do you make it past 40 in software? Specifically, how do you position yourself so that you are actively sought after (rather than merely employable)?

Understand business needs. Be able to communicate. Be upstack: infrastructure, DNS, SSL, etc. Go deep on security: many concerns cut across many languages, but if you're a language/framework of the week developer, you're too busy learning the same thing over and over to have that depth, which businesses desperately need. (I'm 40 and my current role is with a small company where I implement solutions rather than have…

> Go deep on security

Bingo.

Security is one of the few cross-discipline, cross-domain specialities where it is possible to be a reasonably good domain expert and still have a good coverage across other domains. The fundamentals don't change. (And I say this as someone who's been immersed in the field for 25 years, so of course I'm biased.)

There are few other domains that can offer the same level of constant demand.

The beauty - and the depressing aspect - of security is that maybe 10% of security is about software. The remaining 90% is all about what is between people's earlobes. To become good at security, you'll need to learn how to explain extremely difficult and often subtle concepts. And you'll have to do that for both technical and non-technical crowd. That's a fantastic and continuous trial by fire. It's also lots of fun!

Bonus: because everything is a tradeoff, you really can't avoid the engineering approach. Teaching the concepts and reasons for tradeoffs to less senior developers will be part of the job specification. Fun.

> language/framework of the week

To quote something I have often stated in our interviews - there are only four programming language families. Everything else is syntax.

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

#143

Post by eighthnate »

All jobs for almost all people are "dead-end" jobs after the age of 35. Given the pyramid structure of corporations and the workforce, unless you are a select few who are on the track to upper management/executive positions, you are most likely going to peak by 30. It's why so many people change careers. It's either accept the dead-end job or see if the grass is greener elsewhere.

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

#144

Post by le-mark »

otakucode wrote: post #82
marktangotango wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java and Spring, or C# and .net. Java is derided as the next cobol, but there is a lot of new development, lots of jobs, and strong demand for senior talent. Source; me, been doing java since 2003. Age 40+.

Java is absolutely rightly derided as the next COBOL because it is. It is the abstract concept of bureaucracy incarnated in code. But that means it will likely follow COBOLs trajectory. A million legacy systems written in it will underpin the central core of a million businesses, being the (entirely unrecognized) most important component of the entire corporate structure bar none. And those systems will need care and…

Spotted the one who's never written cobol (or jcl).

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

#145

Post by tptacek »

rubicon33 wrote: post #139
draw_down wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would still be programming specialization, as opposed to domain specialization where programming can be applied. I used to know this guy who knew the ins and outs of the health club industry, and he could program a little. He made a lot of money. I think this is more in line with what tptacek is describing.

I think it's still a domain specialization to a degree. The domain being, mobile. Being an expert in iOS is more than just knowing how to program in Swift/Objective-C. It encompasses a deeper understanding of mobile development and the apple ecosystem. True senior level iOS people will understand core user interface design principles as they relate to mobile, and will be intimately aware of Apple's Human Interface Gu…

None of this stuff really sounds "defensible", in the marketing sense, to me. This is just programming. It's the goal of the platform to make programming as accessible as possible to everyone.

It's better to be good at mobile than to be good at nothing at all, sure. But I'd be really careful about picking a specialty that amounts to "my domain of expertise is AppKit", or "my domain of expertise is Scala", or anything like that.

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

#146

Post by bostik »

StreamBright wrote: post #134
herf wrote: post #26

I think this bias needs to evolve, and maybe birth year is more descriptive than age. In 2000, a 40 year old was born in 1960, when the home PC was nearly 20 years off. A programmer who is 40 today was born in 1977, and they could learn to program while they were in diapers. These are very different experiences, and the bar will move over time.

Yep, 79er here, LOAD "$",8 baby! :)

Oh the memories...

?SYNTAX ERROR

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

#147

Post by artmageddon »

astrodust wrote: post #115
artmageddon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you want to hear how to make it past 40 in software, this is probably an excellent place to ask! So far in this thread: - continue to learn / evolve - go into management(well, someone will mention it) - Go into: consulting / start your own business / remote work I'm not too far from 40 myself. Any advice?

If you're coming up on 40 you should know a lot of people. You should have a work history so ridiculously long you need to omit 75% of it to fit it on a two page resume. You should know the business, which companies are succeeding, which are failing, and what problems are most interesting to you. This is a huge advantage compared to some recent graduate that has no idea, knows nobody, and is still learning the geogra…

Thanks for the advice(and I mean that in all seriousness)! I need to start making some more friends it seems, and while I've been employed for 12+ years, my work history doesn't quite meet that standard yet.. looks like I have some more hustling to do..

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

#148

Post by rpeden »

madflame991 wrote: post #61
timr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find a niche that rewards experience in something other than code. This could be non-technical (e.g. "business"), or it could be something more deeply technical (e.g. scaling, machine learning, search, etc.) To some extent, the older you get, the more this happens, naturally. But you can and should make strategic decisions about where you choose to devote your attention. The important principle is that you should dev…

Why would JS be less long-term-valuable? It's only 4 years younger than linux, it's more common than linux and has a much larger community (especially compared to the linux kernel driver one). I don't see either going anywhere in the next 20 years.

Although you've been downvoted, I think your question is fair, so I'll try to give it a fair answer.

In this discussion, when we talk about value, I think it makes sense to look at value in the sense of how valuable a skill is to the longevity of your career.

In that sense, JavaScript has some upsides - it's everywhere, and will likely continue to be everywhere. There will be lots of demand for JavaScript development.

But because JavaScript is everywhere, tons of people know it, and tons of people are learning it. So although there will be lots of demand for JS development, if you're a JS developer, there will also be a ton of people offering a skillset that is broadly similar to yours.

As you mentioned, the demand for something like Linux driver developers is tiny in comparison to the demand for JS developers. But the talent pool is relatively tiny, too. So it might be easier for you to differentiate yourself because when an employer is looking for someone with your skillset, they're not going to have to wade through hundreds of resumes from people who look pretty qualified.

In general, I think it's most valuable to specialize in solving a certain type of problem, where programming just happens to usually be the best way of solving it. It's often easier to sell yourself as a solver of specific kinds of problems than it is to sell yourself as a generalist with experience in JS, HTML, CSS, etc.

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

#149

Post by rubicon33 »

tptacek wrote: post #145
rubicon33 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's still a domain specialization to a degree. The domain being, mobile. Being an expert in iOS is more than just knowing how to program in Swift/Objective-C. It encompasses a deeper understanding of mobile development and the apple ecosystem. True senior level iOS people will understand core user interface design principles as they relate to mobile, and will be intimately aware of Apple's Human Interface Gu…

None of this stuff really sounds "defensible", in the marketing sense, to me. This is just programming. It's the goal of the platform to make programming as accessible as possible to everyone. It's better to be good at mobile than to be good at nothing at all, sure. But I'd be really careful about picking a specialty that amounts to "my domain of expertise is AppKit", or "my domain of expertise is Scala", or anything…

The OP mentions a couple domains that you could also dismiss as "just programming", but actually have a depth to them which allows for specialization: Security, and kernal development.

You could claim that software security is "just programming" for instance... But you likely wouldn't, because it requires a level of understanding that is especially deep, and niche. It doesn't really matter that a security expert likely reads a ton of code, and writes some too, it's that they understand a subset of the industry to a high enough degree that they stand out among their peers.

I propose that you can be a mobile expert, just as you could be a VR expert for example. At the end of the day it's more then just programming, it's a combination of hardware / software / tools that retains a degree of uniqueness.

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

#150

Post by SailingShip »

It's very difficult to "own" "programming" in a way where you can use scarcity to drive integer multiple increases of the median salary. It is not as difficult to "own" distributed systems, sensor fusion, software security, or OS kernels.

Not true, anyone can use scarcity to increase there median salary. After reading about Chip manufacturers and how hardware is becoming less open source, I'm kind of glad to know which one's will rock on with things like OpenBSD on the PowerPC - there's a lot of those old Mac PowerPC's still knocking around with an open firmware bootloader! :)

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