We've got a bunch of gray haired (and hairless) people at my job. In fact, the second youngest person in my team is 22 years older than me, and the oldest is 35 years older than me.
When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
61–67 of 67 posts
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#62I find it hard to reconcile the common complaint that software developers are often unemployable past 35 with my personal observations. This is pure anecdata, but I don't think I know a single software developer who was unable to continue in the industry past 35 as commonly claimed. On the other hand, I know tons of former financial employees who became unemployable in the industry at 30 or even earlier.
I work for a large software company that is well-established and has a lot of legacy code. The majority of programmers I work with are in their 30’s and 40’s, myself included. The company does have a reputation for great work-life balance and the product is most decidedly “unsexy”. I wonder if the key difference is the retention, or the fact that the code base takes so much time to understand that young people either…
Tangent: My first job out of college was maintaining parts of one of these seemingly impeneterable legacy codebases. I was allowed to refactor and rewrite stuff, but only if bug-for-bug compatibility was retained. In retrospect, I think this was a blessing in disguise. It was good character-building, setting me up to follow good engineering practices from day one.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My advice to CS majors is that you need to make enough to retire by 35 as that's when you stand a good chance of being tossed on the trash heap. I agree with this. CS is a GREAT career when you're in your mid 20's, making 6 figures with just a bachelors, while your cohorts are still taking on even more loans in graduate school or earning a fraction of your salary down in the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Th…
"...you're going to be competing with 28 year olds who can write CRUD apps in the shiny new frameworks better than you at 2/3 the salary. Which is why many corporations don't really enjoy keeping on 40+ year old developers who expect to get 5% raises each year..." I think you have already outlined the solution: - don't expect 5% raises, or getting more than other developers at the same level. Your salary will plateau…
I think the difference between software devs and other "profressionals" is that there is a much more stable career path for other industries, which generally includes pretty regular pay and position bumps each year well into your 50s.
I know lawyers that start really making money once they hit partner in their firms in their 40s. Or business / financial types who tend to increase salary just because the "pyramid" effects of their existing clients and number of underlings. Doctors have a very regular schedule of raises as do almost all public workers as they gain seniority - teachers, federal and state workers, etc.
Even the typical corporate middle manager will generally be promoted to higher levels with more responsibility.
But software engineers just don't seem to be given the same options, by default. If you're an individual contributor, there are only so many project managers they need, and companies absolutely will not push your salary up by 5% each year once you've hit a plateau in mid 30's (e.g. about $160K in my relatively high COL city).
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#64> Is 35 the End? I'm well over 60, and doing my best work.
I thought I was hot shit (and not just me...my employers too) until I discovered people like Walter, Stepanov, and other boomers who know programming/computing at such a deeper level that it almost feels hopeless that I can attain the same level of knowledge. I'm confident that I will be a much better programmer decades in the future than I am now.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#65I'm in my mid-50's and I'm doing my best work - and running rings around the younger, less experienced developers. Just plan on every 10 years your technology stack is going to completely and radically change. If that bothers you then stop now and find another career.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#66> Is 35 the End? I'm well over 60, and doing my best work.
I thought I was hot shit (and not just me...my employers too) until I discovered people like Walter, Stepanov, and other boomers who know programming/computing at such a deeper level that it almost feels hopeless that I can attain the same level of knowledge. I'm confident that I will be a much better programmer decades in the future than I am now.
The code I wrote at 35 looks like complete crap to me today.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#67Blather. Hire kids who don't know how or when to say no, and you are coin flipping on whether your project will crash and burn. My advice to CS majors is that you need to make enough to retire by 35 as that's when you stand a good chance of being tossed on the trash heap. Alternatively - win the startup lottery and either cash out or continue as principal.
> My advice to CS majors is that you need to make enough to retire by 35 as that's when you stand a good chance of being tossed on the trash heap. I agree with this. CS is a GREAT career when you're in your mid 20's, making 6 figures with just a bachelors, while your cohorts are still taking on even more loans in graduate school or earning a fraction of your salary down in the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Th…
Why do you need to be "courted" by FAANGs? There are plenty of non-FAANG companies that pay anywhere from 70% to 110% of FAANG standard and hire remotely (especially now, what with the recent shift to remote work). Here's a partial list:
Twitter Square Dropbox Slack Doordash Coinbase Stripe Robinhood Instacart Brex Affirm Twilio HBO Okta Thumbtack Walmart Confluent
...I could go on, but why?
Anyways, it doesn't really matter if your compensation flatlines at 300-400k before you even turn 30, because then you can just retire at 40 if you want.