Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

Pretty much this I think.

I started programming as a career in the last millennium, did desktop stuff for years (Delphi and then .Net) saw the writing on that wall and moved to the web.

It doesn't have to be a "no life, always learning" thing like some make it out to be, I've gotten good (and patient) at waiting things out, I'll take note of a technology, think that it seems interesting and then keep an eye on it for a year or two - I have an internal list I use to evaluate that, if it looks to still be interesting I'll pick it up at that point when there is a wealth of good material and best practices have shaken out and it's a lot easier to pick up.

The sheer torrent of stuff coming out means no one person could possibly keep track of all of it anyway.

These days I do my 40 hours at work and then maybe 4-5hrs a week looking at stuff that interests me outside of work because I find learning enjoyable and then I do other things and switch off.

Although I am not near retirement, I've found there is a sort of sweet-spot to be found doing "kinda" management stuff while still emphatically being a hands-on full-time coder.

I.e. you can proactively do just enough project management, meetings, and architectural discussions so that people leave you alone the rest of the time to code, but you get enough influence to get things largely how you want them to be (i.e. no surprises/stupid decisions forced on you by a PHB).

It requires some drive & gumption to decide to do these things yourself and then the requisite organisational & social skills to schedule the meetings with people, make connections between teams, start the shared design-doc/slides/whatever, generally get people together and "make things happen" etc, but I've found that "the management" value this sort of mini-manager thing hugely, with the bonus that you are not just a passive passenger on the decisions being made about the work you do, but you are actively shaping it because it is you who is out there driving the agenda by just enough.

I can easily see this sort of role being viable into retirement if I wanted - people seem to really value an engineer who can do this sort of thing.

Yes, but you have to find the right positions. Where I currently work there are manager and technical tracks for three or four employee levels (depending on division) between leading a team and executive levels.

Yes. I wrote my first code for hire at age 14, started professionally at age 22, and I'm 53 now.

Still innovating and contributing as a technical guy. I've made it clear I'm not interested in management.

If you have the personality and ambition to be a salesperson you can make a good career out of it. I sometimes thin what else I could do and still earn a living and my introverted personality style gets me back to engineering. It’s unfortunate because ther are a lot of skills to be learned outside of programming.