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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?

#381

Post by ChicagoDave »

jqgatsby wrote: post #346
JimboOmega wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your points, and also suffer from that syndrome. So I have to ask - how do you do the management portion of that? Getting into it, I mean, more than just developing the skills or interest. I've been trying to get into the management side of things but get stymied over and over, and typically people who express disinterest (and no particular aptitude) keep getting chosen to do it. This has had a tendency…

If you are looking for a smooth transition, get on a large team that is under-managed (say, >14 people and only one manager/tech-lead), and in addition to doing your regular tasks, start getting heavily involved in sprint planning and technical & product specs. Gradually do more and more of that and less individual work. Voila, you are a manager!

I think this is the primary path to management.

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by whathaschanged »

caseysoftware wrote: post #368
tmat wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference in engineering and programming. An engineer uses programming to solve an engineering problem. If all you can do is program, you're just not as valuable. Programming is one of many tools I use in my every day job as an engineer. I think this goes back to being an expert in a "domain". Being able to apply programming to that domain is far more valuable.

Quite possible but since everyone uses the term "engineer" without any context or specific qualifications, we should expect any distinctions to dissolve as people realize total morons are using it too. * I have a bachelors in electrical engineering from a top ranked school.

We used to call ourselves programmers. Then it became sexy to say developer. Now it is engineer. (Since you pointed out, it means something different to everyone, so its meaningless).

The future will be a new snazzy term. Same job, different title.

Software development is not engineering.

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

#384

Post by zem »

tmat wrote: post #364
zem wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this worries me sometimes; i have finally (in my early 40s) moved from "specialising in the craft of programming" to getting a job in a domain that excites me (language tooling), but i am now a relative amateur in a field that is full of phds and the like, and i am not sure how large the field itself is going to be in say another 10 years. i've been wondering if i should pick up something entirely different on the si…

Let me tell you, don't worry about it.. You'll use your skills to smoothly transition to something else.. I've been in this industry since copper and telco was hot shit.. I went from doing Telco programming > IT > Web Development > scalable enterprise applications. Why bother stressing over something you have no control over? Do what you love and the money follows.

so far not worrying about it has worked well for me; i've been in tech a bit over 15 years and enjoyed all of it. but at a certain point all the stories about people aging out of the industry start to add up, and you have to wonder if the time has come to be at least a little more ant and less grasshopper :) at 42 "do what you love and money follows" is still working for me; another decade down the line i'm guessing i'll have to put a bit more active work into staying relevant.

i do have some hope that i've gotten into my current niche (static type inference for dynamic languages) reasonably early in its life cycle, but if i'm wrong i don't want to have not kept up with the larger world at least to some extent.

(to be precise, i'm not so much worried about being able to transition my skills to something else, as about not being given a chance to do so unless i can already demonstrate the new skillset people are looking for.)

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

#385

Post by zem »

tptacek wrote: post #299
zem wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this worries me sometimes; i have finally (in my early 40s) moved from "specialising in the craft of programming" to getting a job in a domain that excites me (language tooling), but i am now a relative amateur in a field that is full of phds and the like, and i am not sure how large the field itself is going to be in say another 10 years. i've been wondering if i should pick up something entirely different on the si…

If you asked a random sampling of 1000+ karma HN users what my specialty was, a bunch of them would say "crypto", but I have 1 semester of college and didn't know CBC mode from CFB mode 8 years ago. Some fields might be locked up by postgrads (crypto engineering is not one of them, and I doubt language tooling is either). You should check before you invest too much in it. But I would advise against being spooked by a…

thanks, it is useful to step back and think about all the other people in the field who don't have phds, or who (like me) don't even have PL backgrounds, but are still happily working on interesting problems. it's just been "different" moving from working on code architecture to working in a field with way more academic than industry representation; i can't help but notice that i can write the code but i'm far from being able to write the papers.

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

#386

Post by [deleted] »

_Tev wrote: post #347
DataWorker wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an important “or”. It’s not always scarcity, it’s often the perceived value. CEOs are just one of many examples where the pay is not at all because of scarcity.

Are there really that many people capable and willing to work as CEO? From my experience there are never enough good managers.

[deleted]

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

#387

Post by GijsjanB »

timr wrote: post #72
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.

I changed it to "Javascript framework" to stop triggering the JS devs here, while making the identical point: if you specialize in a technology that was invented last year, you are taking a big risk that it won't survive. If you pick a technology that has been in active use for over 20 years and is currently popular, you are taking less of a risk. This is harder to do, but like many things that are hard, the reward i…

I did not downvote, but I do think JS is a bad example. JS has been active for over 20 years and is currently popular. Sure, new frameworks are popping up and everybody rallies around "the latest", but come on, it's not like Java and C# are written in stone.

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

#388

Post by JimboOmega »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #381
jqgatsby wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are looking for a smooth transition, get on a large team that is under-managed (say, >14 people and only one manager/tech-lead), and in addition to doing your regular tasks, start getting heavily involved in sprint planning and technical & product specs. Gradually do more and more of that and less individual work. Voila, you are a manager!

I think this is the primary path to management.

When I tried this, what happened was one of the engineers who didn't want to manage, but had been around longer than me, got promoted - and I got moved on to his team. People came to me expecting me to be leading the team (or at least know what's going on), but I suddenly got cut out of doing that. It was chaos.

The person who was selected as lead left a month later, since they weren't that interested in doing it anyway. The powers that be still didn't let me lead the team, though by that point attrition had gotten so high, it kind of didn't make sense. (There wasn't really a team to lead).

The team before that was a similar deal (chosen lead quit not too long after) but I got made a lead... of a team with two people on it (including me). The company went basically bankrupt, and having only 6 months experience with 1 report didn't impress people.

I don't think being a trans woman helps.

I really do try; I come up with new initiatives, I follow through on them, I give talks to educate the team, but in the end, I'm always waiting some number of years for the next magical re-org, which may or may not go my way.

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

#389

Post by timr »

GijsjanB wrote: post #387
timr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I changed it to "Javascript framework" to stop triggering the JS devs here, while making the identical point: if you specialize in a technology that was invented last year, you are taking a big risk that it won't survive. If you pick a technology that has been in active use for over 20 years and is currently popular, you are taking less of a risk. This is harder to do, but like many things that are hard, the reward i…

I did not downvote, but I do think JS is a bad example. JS has been active for over 20 years and is currently popular. Sure, new frameworks are popping up and everybody rallies around "the latest", but come on, it's not like Java and C# are written in stone.

I wouldn't use Java or C# for that comparison, either (though yes, it's a safer bet that Java will be popular 20 years from now -- Javascript has only become popular as a language in the last 5-10 years, whereas Java has been popular since the 90s.)

But would I bet on Javascript over (for example) C? No way. Any new developer would be wise to learn C, even if they completely ignored Javascript. And I don't need any technical details about the language to make that call.

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

#390

Post by andrewflnr »

useranme wrote: post #305
andrewflnr wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are more dimensions than buckets, and not very orthogonal ones at that. In particular there is strong overlap between declarative and functional language features (you could argue functional is just a special case), and less strong overlap between imperative and OO languages, and OO and functional. OCaml fits pretty comfortably in all four of those categories, when you want it to. If I wanted to jam languages i…

I'm curious, what makes the ML families different than Algol?

The ML family tend to come from a research background, have a more rigorous approach to typing, solid type inference, and very differently flavored syntax. MLs are functional (first-class functions, expression-orientation), whereas the Algol family in the shape of C, Java etc are mostly imperative. They tend to have nice pattern matching facilities. There's more, but that's a lot of it. A lot of these features have been transplanted into languages that are basically on the Algol tree, so it's often a bit fuzzy these days.
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