When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
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When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
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Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#2Blather. 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.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#3Hah I hope not. I'm 31 and just starting my time as a stay at home dad. I sure hope the tech jobs are around for me when I make it out the other side :)
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#4I 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.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#5Define “programmer”. Experience is incredibly important but applying it doesn’t imply writing code, and it would be a waste of time for someone with valuable experience to be writing a lot of arbitrary code.
I don’t write that much code anymore even for fun. But the little code I do write is because it absolutely needs to be state-of-the-art, which is only possible with deep experience. I’ve seen this with other programmers as well; as they get older they write far less code, but the code they write tends to be code that is critically important and only a small number of people have the experience and skill to write. They pick their code writing battles.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#6The bar to entry is too low. If you're a programmer, you should have a plan B for yourself after 35. Otherwise, you're being financially irresponsible to yourself and taking a gamble that companies will not discriminate you based on your age.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#7Didn't really get good at writing code until I was 35. Maybe I am just a late bloomer. Not that I was bad but it took me longer and I was often chasing that shiny new penny that claimed to solved all the things that irritated me about whatever tool I was currently using only to have a different set of problems of it's own.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#8I 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 stay or jump ship quickly.
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#9[deleted]
Re: When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
#10And we are listening to the wild speculations of a random content marketer with nothing to back up their assertions because.. why?