I'm in my early 40's, but I've recruited software engineers for almost 20 years and I until recently I ran a large Java Users Group over 15 years, which gave me quite a bit of exposure to an older range of engineers. I know many 50+ programmers who are doing quite well (monetarily, respect, responsibility, balance). Some independent consultants, some at startups, some with big firms, etc. A fairly wide variety. Not a…
Just want to put a link on here to a guy I've seen on HN a bunch of times whose name I recognized:
I'm 54. Got my current job when I was 52 (prior to that, 11 years at Microsoft). I think if you're not over-specialized that you can still do well. Doing be a person who just writes device drivers, or just does web stuff, or just writes toolchains. Do it all, and at depth when you can. I tend to get into projects that are 2-3 years in scope and involve actually shipping new technologies at consumer scale. This will t…
> I think if you're not over-specialized that you can still do well. Doing be a person who just writes device drivers, or just does web stuff, or just writes toolchains. Do it all, and at depth when you can. When reviewing job reqs, I see the opposite. Outside the web and mobile arenas, companies seem to want people who are highly specialized in what they do.
I worked up until last year, when at age 62 I decided to retire -- mostly because I could! A good portion of my career was in traditional, more hierarchical industries such as rail and steel, where a sizable number of older employees were often the norm. I also tended to specialize in legacy applications that other (mostly younger) staff didn't really want to touch -- products like PowerBuilder or IBM (Lotus) Notes. Yeah, I also did work with newer technology, but I never really let go of the older stuff because 1) it was the core of my earlier experience and I didn't mind working with it, and 2) there always seemed to be a need for someone to do maintenance, updates, or conversions.
I am 64. I wrote my first program in 1970 and have worked as a programmer since 1976. Programming was a good career choice. For many years I was a manager and pretty much hated it and returned to programming. I quit my job and went to work at IBM as a software engineer the year I turned 50. I was the oldest person in my department, and was a bit of a father figure to some of the kids there. Otherwise I did not fit in and left after two years. I worked at about the same salary on a job for the next ten years and now, at 64, I have a nice job helping to translate COBOL to Java. I am still making a six figure salary, but I will retire in 313 days (I wrote an app that gives me exact time down to the second). I had no problem finding a job when I was 62, but the job was one where I needed Java skills, plus in-depth knowledge of legacy programming languages.
I taught myself Fortran, then Cobol, then PL/1, then Focus, then Basic, then VB, then Java, then Javascript, then Ruby. I find it easy to upgrade my skills. I code in PHP for fun in my off time, so when I retire, I will still program my little PHP projects for fun. Programming is not what I do, but who I am.
I'm in my early 40s and I don't have a problem finding work. I tend to work for big companies though. I would like to work at smaller, startup-like companies in the future, but it sounds like there is bias against older workers in that realm.
I am 64. I wrote my first program in 1970 and have worked as a programmer since 1976. Programming was a good career choice. For many years I was a manager and pretty much hated it and returned to programming. I quit my job and went to work at IBM as a software engineer the year I turned 50. I was the oldest person in my department, and was a bit of a father figure to some of the kids there. Otherwise I did not fit in…
Would you tell me a little about your transition to and from management? Did you find it difficult to give up the management role at all, and were there things that you learned from managing that you were able to use when you went back to being a full-time engineer?
Im almost 30, i will keep programming forever since its something i enjoy but i have a different plan for my 50+, i would like to have enough passive income so i can work on whatever i would like to and dont stress about having a job if it becomes hard to find it.
If I can offer another angle: I'm not a full-time programmer and never was, but I code in a number of languages to support my real day-job (finance). I'm getting close to 50 and I feel the value of my coding skills only increases year after year. Why? Because if you combine solid programming with deep subject domain experience, you offer something that is quite rare. I've always thought of my coding skills as an insurance policy should my day job implode. The premium is quite steep though - I spend a lot of time keeping-up with language developments, new frameworks etc.
So I am 45, and it is definitely possible, but I think it is more that we are pulling it out on shear strength, after all, we are smart people. I think some kind of balancing would be beneficial, how exactly and what would be fair, I don't know.
I just know that we have to make space for people who are not as capable to be able to be productive members of our teams, we get them from two directions, senior guys who maybe didn't stayed as current with their skills and also young people who are coming into profession and not all of them are super smart and capable. I see no reason for not including those two.
I'm 51 and was a programmer for most of my career, 20 years at a small company and moving from BCPL to C to VB to .Net
At 40ish with family grown up I looked for a change and moved to being a tester - and then just before I was 50 moved from the UK to the US for a job.
I've been active and made my name known in the testing community and there is a demand for good exploratory testers. Still learning ( mobile was a big learning curve ) and showing I can add value for all sorts of projects and at different parts of the s/w lifecycle