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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?

#151

Post by bostik »

sumeno wrote: post #113
danjoc wrote: post #63

Ageism is more than hiring young. It's letting people go or burning them out as they age too. These companies expect excessive overtime until people burn out. As developers and IT staff age, they self select out of it, because it isn't healthy. https://www.quora.com/How-many-hours-a-week-does-a-typical-G... "10am to 8pm on weekdays, no work on weekends? That's not a lot, not by a long shot." See, they have such stock…

10-8 on weekdays with no weekends is only 50 hours a week assuming you are working the entire time. Not ideal but it isn't an absurd amount of time either. Sure 8pm is late but they are also getting to work at 10am. People wouldn't be nearly as upset by someone saying they are at work from 8-6 I think it varies greatly depending on what team you're on but I work ~40 hours a week most weeks

I can guarantee that it's far too much when you have a family. You want to be able to spend at least some time with your kid(s) and see them in a state other than overly tired and/or hyper before going to bed.

If tech companies want to encourage women to join by paying them to freeze their eggs, I don't see why they wouldn't pay men to have a vasectomy too. What better way to ensure that family won't get in the way?

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

#152

Post by SailingShip »

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.

True, the software constantly evolves, but that doesn't mean your hardware has too as well.

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

#153

Post by kemiller »

Depends what you mean by dead-end. If you want to remain a pure individual contributor, there will be an asymptotic decline in your wage increases because, to be honest, there are diminishing returns when it comes to coding. You may be amazing at it, but you are still only one person. If you want to continue growing in impact and compensation, you will have to figure out how to add leverage to the team around you. Management is the obvious path for some, but it can be mentoring, teaching, open source, speaking, domain expertise, etc. You also have to stay current and engaged. There will be bias some places, for sure, and you have to be more proactive and strategic, but there are plenty of teams that value their older developers very highly.

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

#154

Post by erobbins »

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…

Hi, me!

I look around at my bigN and I see all these 20something people who just love what they're working on and are passionate about it, and I get it. I was the same way at that age.

I just don't care anymore, tbh. I want to work on something fun, and things that are fun don't usually provide a paycheck. So I grind away, and the years waste away, and I don't know what to do about it. I'm smart enough to get by without investing a lot of effort, but I'm really just wasting my life.

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

#155

Post by tptacek »

rubicon33 wrote: post #149
tptacek wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 like…

I think I managed to communicate about half my point to you, but missed the mark with the other half.

Yes: you can specialize in being a really good programmer for a particular platform. I have a lot of friends who specialize in being Serious Engineers, who understand how to get interesting and important things done with lenses and how to effectively get a whole project away from null pointers and into monadic error checking and how to use type systems to prove programs mostly correct as they're being written.

That is a real specialty. It takes real skill and investment of time to get to the point of being expert with that stuff. I'm not diminishing the value of being an expert software developer.

I'm just saying that basket of specialties is unlikely to command a very high wage premium, not because it's unspecialized, but because it's hard to fashion a value proposition for it relative to your competition in the market.

There will be times during which particular platforms or languages will get hot, and it'll be good to be expert with them. But (a) those phenomenon will be more transient than other problem domains, and (b) the wage premium for being specialized in them will still probably be lower than the wage premiums for the other domains.

At any rate: as long as you're thinking about the domains you're specializing in and not a career as a "programmer" or a "builder of software", we can probably agree to disagree about the rest of the details.

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

#156

Post by SubuSS »

At all the companies I have worked at till now (MS/Amazon and Snap) - we always have a hard-time finding good experienced engineers. So I would contend the reverse: It is actually awesome after 35-40. By this age group - I think many engineers have moved on to careers in management etc., So the ones who remain are in high demand.

There are a few big catches though:

- You better be really good in both development AND engineering.

- You better be able to work with people. You may not be a manager by now, but mentoring takes on a giant role few years in. And very few opportunities arise where it requires a single heroic effort (capitalize when it does happen).

- As @tptacek covered elsewhere, you better have one field you are really good at.

- You better be very good at picking up 'new' stuff and identifying similarities to what you have done already: most of the learnings carry over, you eventually figure most of it is pretty much the same ketchup in a different bottle. BUT there are usually some incremental advances: your ability to catch on to these matters a lot.

- Companies have always liked the 'T' candidates: Who can operate in a broad set of areas and have real deep knowledge in one field.

I don't know how to say the following without sounding proud, but I think it adds relevant data points - so I will just put it up here: In my case (15 years?) I have done a ton of server development, I am trying to do some actual client(ios/android) work in addition to generic consulting. But my depth is around data - I have worked on multiple storage engines by now, built a bunch of database systems. I have never really sold my resume based on languages or technologies (they come and go - I would estimate I have worked on anywhere between 20-40 languages based on how loosely we define that, most experience has been with c/java/python). Last time I was looking to switch jobs 2 years ago, I had offers from almost all the big companies in cs within a month.

Sadly I don't have data points on how easy it is to enter this field beyond 35 :(.

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

#157

Post by southphillyman »

swah wrote: post #31

This is depressing. I'm 33 and still haven't really find a niche inside software dev that I'm willing to stay... On the other hand, nobody asks doctors and lawyers if their are planning to retire at 35.

Yea I'm getting depressed reading the advice in here. I'm around your age and not an expert in any domain. I pick work based not on a particular domain or industry but more so tech stack and perceived work environment. As a result my domain expertise is the equivalent of "10 years of 1 year experience" .

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

#158

Post by SailingShip »

HN15718653 wrote: post #106
danjoc wrote: post #63

Ageism is more than hiring young. It's letting people go or burning them out as they age too. These companies expect excessive overtime until people burn out. As developers and IT staff age, they self select out of it, because it isn't healthy. https://www.quora.com/How-many-hours-a-week-does-a-typical-G... "10am to 8pm on weekdays, no work on weekends? That's not a lot, not by a long shot." See, they have such stock…

That answer is quite bullshitty. I was there for many years and a few teams, and 8pm was NOT the norm. In fact, it's ludicrous to even imagine a busy Google office at 8pm. 6pm it starts to slow down, by 6:30 half the office is heading out. Some people would get there super early and leave early-ish. Look, at the end of the day it's about getting shit done and COMMITTING CODE. That latter part is something a lot of pe…

It's about getting shit done and COMMITTING CODE. No it's not, it's about proprietary android code and a bullshit kernel. That latter part is something a lot of people refuse to accept. It does matter how smart you are and how much experience you have, Google will never be acceptable, it is the biggest piece of spy-ware and mal-ware in history!

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

#159

Post by j45 »

matwood wrote: post #127
dandr01d wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. I'm currently on a team that has a couple senior engineers, but neither of them are true experts of what our team does (iOS). One has decades of web dev experience while the other has decades of Java service experience. Our team badly needs an iOS expert to make the tough decisions and lead architecture.

You did miss the point of the parent. To be more clear, programming for the most part is easy . Knowing what to program is hard. I don't know what your iOS app does, but lets pretend it's something to do with healthcare. Someone who is an expert in the healthcare domain and can program (or learn whatever stack you are using) is going to be much more valuable than an expert iOS person who has no clue about healthcare.…

Not just knowing what to program, but how - clever and mindful architecture will always beat clever programming.

Developing transferrable strategic and architectural skills between verticals (client facing, or technologies) is a key aspect that I see being missed with programmers.

No framework will make or keep your career, nor will a specific language or piece of tech. Knowing how to apply technology well, in a way that doesn't need to be entirely thrown away every 2-3 years is invaluable, and as a result increases a developers value.

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

#160

Post by j45 »

lliamander wrote: post #40
Gargoyle wrote: post #22

In the general sense, this is the wrong place to ask. It's a self-selecting group in that most people over 40 here will be among the group that lasted in the career. It won't give a sense of how large that group is in the wider world, nor how many didn't stick with it. On the other hand, if you want to hear how to make it past 40 in software, this is probably an excellent place to ask!

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)?

One way to make it past 40 in software is continue demonstrating that you're learning, creating, releasing, and share it publicly like you may have in your 20's.
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