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The difference being, the older you get the more you will be perceived an expert at law. Your experience ages like a fine wine. Experience in tech ages more lik

The difference being, the older you get the more you will be perceived an expert at law. Your experience ages like a fine wine. Experience in tech ages more like a ripe watermelon sitting in the sun. Your earning potential will only go up the longer you are a lawyer. That is not true for those that stay developers their entire career. P.S. I also spent a great deal of time getting degrees. B.S. in computer science and a Master's in Software Engineering. It is often not required to get a job, but it is still a barrier for many openings.

flexie 10y ago
Let's see. In 20 years your field might have made large parts of my field redundant. I truly hope so :-) Programming is still a young profession and it's growing at a tremendous pace. The population pyramid of Programmers' Land actually looks like a pyramid which might cause programmers to think that older people can't make it. I know many older folks in IT who are still active. My old man continued until he was 70. They may not know the newest tricks in node.js or machine learning but they are the only ones who know the old legacy code that lock-in users and protect their jobs. I bet you and most of your colleagues will be active until retirement. Just like lawyers may continue as partners (partially or mostly doing managing or marketing) many programmers might transfer to management. A lot of programmers have long formal education but the market for programmers without education is still huge and the salaries for programmers without formal training easily beat almost any other professions where there are no educational requirements and a lot of professions with educational requirements. In which other profession can you realistically hope to start with salaries of 60-80k after a few months of online courses?
- dpeterson 10y ago
  I think we've lost sight of the argument. I do not disagree that people taking a few months of online courses are being paid well (or above) what they should be earning as a programmer.

flexie 10y ago

Let's see. In 20 years your field might have made large parts of my field redundant. I truly hope so :-) Programming is still a young profession and it's growing at a tremendous pace. The population pyramid of Programmers' Land actually looks like a pyramid which might cause programmers to think that older people can't make it. I know many older folks in IT who are still active. My old man continued until he was 70. They may not know the newest tricks in node.js or machine learning but they are the only ones who know the old legacy code that lock-in users and protect their jobs. I bet you and most of your colleagues will be active until retirement. Just like lawyers may continue as partners (partially or mostly doing managing or marketing) many programmers might transfer to management. A lot of programmers have long formal education but the market for programmers without education is still huge and the salaries for programmers without formal training easily beat almost any other professions where there are no educational requirements and a lot of professions with educational requirements. In which other profession can you realistically hope to start with salaries of 60-80k after a few months of online courses?

dpeterson 10y ago
I think we've lost sight of the argument. I do not disagree that people taking a few months of online courses are being paid well (or above) what they should be earning as a programmer.