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This is why, at age 38, I deliberately chose to move to big-tech-company-x. As it turns out, most of my colleagues are older than me and starting to look toward

This is why, at age 38, I deliberately chose to move to big-tech-company-x. As it turns out, most of my colleagues are older than me and starting to look towards their pensions. The tech is 10 years out of date, but it's so ingrained in the customer sites that it's going to stay there. There are plenty of jobs like this out there in finance, public institutions (or big companies serving them), the military (military projects can go on for decades) and so on. I get job security and a decent pension building up, they get an experienced developer in return. And in the meantime I can choose to look at shiny-new-thing without having to worry my career might depend on it. People might think 38 is a bit early to "sell out", but our industry is definitely ageist. It's not easy for non-techs to see the difference between an experienced dev who wants £100k that knows technology x and a graduate who wants £fuck-all and knows technology x.

treehau5 10y ago
Until that one consultant moves in, and convinces someone higher up that you need to move to microservices and containerize all the things, and next thing you know, you are all growing mustaches, wearing suspenders and horn-rimmed glasses, taking Lyft's to work, and clamoring for the company to sponsor your Chemex habits.
- soundwave106 10y ago
  And then the consultants leave, and the experienced developers have to fix the crummy bug-ridden code they leave behind. :) As an older developer, I think one advantage I do actually have is that I do know legacy technology. You don't want to become a developer that only knows that, but as long as I reasonably keep up with current technology and don't become a Grumpy Old Back In My Day type of old developer, that should add, not subtract. At my current job, there are actually some VB6 apps still in operation, so sometimes I am actually pulling up VB6 apps to fix or enhance to go along with the shiny new Angular 2 apps we're working on. Yes I know that I don't have the energy to pursue the move-fast-break-things life of startup style companies, but not every company is like that.

treehau5 10y ago

Until that one consultant moves in, and convinces someone higher up that you need to move to microservices and containerize all the things, and next thing you know, you are all growing mustaches, wearing suspenders and horn-rimmed glasses, taking Lyft's to work, and clamoring for the company to sponsor your Chemex habits.

soundwave106 10y ago
And then the consultants leave, and the experienced developers have to fix the crummy bug-ridden code they leave behind. :) As an older developer, I think one advantage I do actually have is that I do know legacy technology. You don't want to become a developer that only knows that, but as long as I reasonably keep up with current technology and don't become a Grumpy Old Back In My Day type of old developer, that should add, not subtract. At my current job, there are actually some VB6 apps still in operation, so sometimes I am actually pulling up VB6 apps to fix or enhance to go along with the shiny new Angular 2 apps we're working on. Yes I know that I don't have the energy to pursue the move-fast-break-things life of startup style companies, but not every company is like that.