Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

I would be interested in more information about this. Which parts of the world, farming what, what skills make a good farmhand, and is there any public data that I could look at to look at trends?

So this is how I look at the health of the market:

1) Does any programmer have their choice of jobs? (which is to say bargaining power when changing jobs)

2) What is the median unemployment time for programmers?

3) How are the first two mediated by contract vs full time work?

4) What are the median salaries?

What I've been seeing since the more recent depression is that unemployment median is staying fairly low but that is being achieved by an increase in the number of folks doing contracting work. Full time work (and that includes health benefits which become significantly more expensive for the 'over 50' programmer as a contractor) is getting harder to find.

As with most markets it is more clear on the 'mediocre' programmers (where mediocre is a function of code productivity) Another thing I'm seeing is salary erosion, which is to say that engineers taking lower salaries at large companies to stay employed. That also indicates a switch in the 'bargaining power' of companies looking for programmers vs the available programmers.

The sequence I've seen a number of times now with acquaintances are flat to negative salary growth when leaving one job and moving to the next. Some folks spent a year or two consulting looking for that position that would be a net gain on their salary growth.

From an economist's point of view if prices are flat to trending down it signals a shift in power from the seller to the buyer.

Those are the signs I'm seeing, would love to hear other's experiences on whether or not they think the market is saturating or not.

The marketing bit is a bit special since they don't actually spend any money by showcasing Chrome on google.com.

Edit: They do spend lots of money to get it pre-installed on new PCs, though.

The moving targets that are the latest fads in languages (every six years a new "generation" does the same old thing their way) and shifts in market demand certainly create an environment requiring constant learning. Unless you're in business for yourself and taking on more risk and stress, your earnings will top out in the low six-figures so you have to value daily comfort and health insurance over any grand ambition or ability to disappear for months at a time. Outsourcing and immigrants willing to work longer hours for less money are a constant macro threat to this comfort zone too.

To say that it requires almost no education isn't true. An engineering or computer science degree surely makes it easier to get a job. Whether that training makes a difference at work if you started coding at age 9 anyway is debatable but a degree gets you recognition as a professional and shows that you have deep cross-training in math and physics.

I do agree coding non-mission critical applications is pretty low stress and for the most part you have a chance at a decent quality of life.