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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?

#231

Post by amyjess »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #187
cgh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. Also, I suspect a lot of this "there's no life after 40" stuff mainly relates to startups and certain small companies. It certainly doesn't apply to BigCorps.

I suspect this is true. I hear the "middle-aged programmers aren't employable" story a lot on the internet, but in the large organization where I work I, in my mid-20s, am conspicuously very junior. Most of my coworkers are middle-aged, most of the program management are getting into their '50s, as you might expect of someone in a role seen as senior.

I work at a mid-sized B2B telecom (just over 500 employees), and looking at the ages of my coworkers, we have more 30+ people than not, and there is a very large contingent of 40+ and even some 50+ people here.

It's definitely the kind of company you want to work at if you're middle-aged.

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

#232

Post by bamboozled »

brianwawok wrote: post #3
bamboozled wrote: post #2

Ask Linus Torvalds

You cannot prove the goodness or badness of a thing by a single data point.

Well here’s to taking it literally.

All I meant is there are great devs out there who aren’t 21, Linus is one example.

Wow

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

#233

Post by timr »

rpeden wrote: post #148
madflame991 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 developmen…

It's true that differentiation is a factor in career longevity, but it's not the point I was trying to make, nor the one that I would emphasize. The true advantage of learning how to do kernel development (over, say, a Javascript framework) is mostly that you're learning a technology is likely to be in demand in 20 years.

Given how much JS development thrashes, it's a pretty reasonable bet that whatever you're learning this year will be out of fashion next year, and irrelevant in five years. That's the high-order bit, when you're thinking about your career.

Even for something as "narrow" as linux kernel development, I can pretty much guarantee that someone will want hire you in 20 years, so long as you are competent. I can't make that guarantee for most technologies.

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

#234

Post by replicatorblog »

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)?

My father-in-law is pushing 70 and still coding. He just semi-retired, but up until last year he was employed, despite having little in the way of social skills and living in a remote area, far from any coding hub. If he was just a bit more personable and willing to move within a couple hours drive of Boston he could have fielded multiple offers. Pure anecdote, but if you're decent, have a little hustle, and don't mind working in a soulless office park, it seems like you'll never struggle to find a gig.

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

#235

Post by amyjess »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #161
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. Programmers to programmers: You must be a super agile ninja capable of teaching yourself everything at a moment's notice. Businesses to programmers: Yeah, we still need people doing Java 6 and VB6. We're also going to disregard all of your security and technical debt concerns. We're also going to hire managers who suddenly change a bunch of tech,…

> Programmers to programmers: You must be a super agile ninja capable of teaching yourself everything at a moment's notice.

I'd be interested in a demographic breakdown of the people who say this. I'd be willing to bet that most of them are in their twenties, live in SF/SV or Seattle, and/or work at startups or insanely demanding trendsetting companies (e.g. Google, Amazon, Tesla, Apple). In other words, these claims are made by people who care about being "cool".

I don't think you'll hear this much from people who live in less trendy areas and work at less trendy companies. Older people and people who work at conservative companies in conservative areas of conservative states (Hi, I work at a B2B telecom in Plano, Texas, and I'm in my 30s) probably aren't going to be making those kinds of claims.

If you stop caring about being "cool", you'll find plenty of work that'll sustain you until you retire.

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

#236

Post by hodgesrm »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

The answer is pretty reasonable in the Quora post (Answer: no). In my experience, people who get something more out writing software than a salary tend to stay in software development, at some level, for their entire career. That said, if you're a software developer and you're also good at communicating and managing people, seriously consider moving into management. While I think the stories of the '10x' developer ar…

Senior developers don't just write code. They know how to get other people to write code and frame problems in a way that they can be implemented within whatever organization employs them. Many companies value these talents quite highly. They are not that different from the skills that characterize great managers.

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

#237

Post by nomercy400 »

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.

This. Exactly this. In five years time it'll be the 40-45 range, and in ten years 45-50. There is a point in time to where computers and software development really started to take off, becoming ingrained in every person's life from the start.

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

#238

Post by [deleted] »

SailingShip wrote: post #158
HN15718653 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

[deleted]

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

#239

Post by mwfunk »

tptacek wrote: post #71

I was going to add this as a reply to a comment downthread but I think it's too important to bury. The fundamental rule of career progression in the technology industry is to position yourself as a domain expert in something more specific than "programming" . 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…

This is excellent advice. I would add that another key ingredient is never resting on your laurels, and continually learning and improving. Successful people (and companies) often get to a comfortable place where they can get away with doing the same thing over and over, but the money keeps rolling in. It can be very tempting to step off the gas and just enjoy the fruits of your labors for a while.

Some people get to this point and never step back on the gas, because it seems like things are going to be great forever. Once people get too comfortable, it's only a matter of time until it bites them.

IMO it's important to continually reinvent yourself throughout your career, to keep things interesting, but also to always put you in the best position to take whatever the next step is. If you wait until it's time to take that next step before figuring out where you want to go, it's too late.

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

#240

Post by dragonwriter »

nomercy400 wrote: post #237
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.

This. Exactly this. In five years time it'll be the 40-45 range, and in ten years 45-50. There is a point in time to where computers and software development really started to take off, becoming ingrained in every person's life from the start.

> There is a point in time to where computers and software development really started to take off, becoming ingrained in every person's life from the start.

Computers and software use, maybe; for software development it hasn't happened (it seemed to be heading that way in the mid-1980s, backed off starting around the beginning of the 1990s, and seems recently to have turned back around at least in terms of what lots of people are saying. We’ll see...)

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