When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?

I'm well over 60, and doing my best work.

Ageism may be alive in startups, but in technology as a whole, it doesn't really seem to be a big deal if you are up to date on your skills.

In short, if you are under 40 and an engineer, you currently probably are massively underestimating how hard it will be to get an IC or junior management job at a quality tech firm once you turn 45 or so. There is a ton of inertia against hiring mid 40 engineers.

There are some what I would call organizationally rational reasons to be wary of hiring engineering talent at mid 40s and above, and some organizationally poor reasons.

On the rational side, you have to remember that most of the industry works on a promote-to-management methodology for engineering ICs. There are a few rare companies that have distinguished engineering type tracks for lifers, but most do not. So, the first thing anyone looking at an engineer in their mid 40s is thinking is: “this person was never a good enough employee to get promoted into management.”

I would say that this is generally a reasonable prior to have while assessing someone, and a hiring manager who is open minded will at least want to understand why that is. Many of the whys mean they might not be a good fit at a growing engineering org.

On the bad Nash equilibrium side of hiring, esp. at a fast growth company, there will be, guaranteed, large team managers in their mid-20s. Some of them will turn out to be stellar leaders, or are stellar leaders. The rest, ... do not want to manage people twice their age. So, this is a suboptimal outcome that comes from pretty normal group hierarchy type tendencies, compounding with the above it can mean even a pretty progressive org can feel principled about not hiring engineering that is ‘too old’.

There is more negative selection bias as well - engineers with good negotiating skills that know how to strategically lever their talent can head into consulting or other other performance based situations and make 10-100x a base salary.

All this adds up to, in my mind, that engineers in their 30s need an exit strategy - and they need to execute on it fast.

The “best” exit strategies, if you have the skill and talents would be: startup co-founder, quant fund partner, high value high leverage consultant, CTO, SVP/Engineering, SVP/Product roles.

The “middle” exit strategies would be engineering management, product management, ‘fixer/number 5 employee/adult for startups’.

The “lower” exit strategies would be single-platform specific engineering skills at large, wealthy, slow-moving companies. DB2 engineering at IBM, Java IC at Oracle, or esoteric tech skills in mid to low value industries (e.g. wordpress guru, adobe plugin developer)

Any of these would, in my estimation provide a nice landing pad through to retirement. But if you miss it, I think the outcome is going to be some harder times scrambling as a consultant / building a small consulting practice trying to maintain standard of living against a whole raft of household expenses as your kids get older. It comes fast.