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It depends highly on how you approach development I imagine. I'm 38 and I've got no problems. But I'm also single with no kids and spend basically every spare

It depends highly on how you approach development I imagine. I'm 38 and I've got no problems. But I'm also single with no kids and spend basically every spare minute outside of work in front of a computer, as I have done since about age 9. I've worked with many people who just want a simple job, something they can coast on... and there are absolutely jobs for people that want that sort of position. Management is typically like that, since they rarely do anything challenging or unusual or requiring taking risks or being creative. But as developers, there are also lots of antiquated systems which will continue to be maintained until they fail catastrophically and completely. Young developers are usually far less capable of dealing with such systems than older ones are. Just take a modern full-stack developer and ask them to describe what a processor is actually doing sometime. They are used to working at such an extreme level of abstraction above the hardware that they don't usually have the slightest idea what's actually going on in the hardware. To them transpiling other languages into javascript didn't even sound like proposing the inmates get to repaint the asylum in their own scat for a long time.

jdmichal 9y ago
> Management is typically like that, since they rarely do anything challenging or unusual or requiring taking risks or being creative. I think there are a lot of mediocre managers with such behavior. I'll tell you right now, the best managers I've had absolutely take risks all the time. They're typically political risks, rather than technical ones. [0] But a lot of good team management is clearing the way for your team to get work done, which involves putting your own butt on the line. Which is a really scary prospect, when you dig into it. You're sticking your neck out and risking your reputation to clear a path for your team... And if they fail, it's reflected onto your reputation equally or even more! Oh, and this actually gets worse as you move up. You become responsible for broader swaths of action, so you're taking larger risks to clear larger paths. But at the same time, you have less direct influence over execution. [0] And there are some number of technologists who abhor politics and maybe therefore don't recognize it.

jdmichal 9y ago

> Management is typically like that, since they rarely do anything challenging or unusual or requiring taking risks or being creative. I think there are a lot of mediocre managers with such behavior. I'll tell you right now, the best managers I've had absolutely take risks all the time. They're typically political risks, rather than technical ones. [0] But a lot of good team management is clearing the way for your team to get work done, which involves putting your own butt on the line. Which is a really scary prospect, when you dig into it. You're sticking your neck out and risking your reputation to clear a path for your team... And if they fail, it's reflected onto your reputation equally or even more! Oh, and this actually gets worse as you move up. You become responsible for broader swaths of action, so you're taking larger risks to clear larger paths. But at the same time, you have less direct influence over execution. [0] And there are some number of technologists who abhor politics and maybe therefore don't recognize it.