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Depends what you mean by dead-end. If you want to remain a pure individual contributor, there will be an asymptotic decline in your wage increases because, to

Depends what you mean by dead-end. If you want to remain a pure individual contributor, there will be an asymptotic decline in your wage increases because, to be honest, there are diminishing returns when it comes to coding. You may be amazing at it, but you are still only one person. If you want to continue growing in impact and compensation, you will have to figure out how to add leverage to the team around you. Management is the obvious path for some, but it can be mentoring, teaching, open source, speaking, domain expertise, etc. You also have to stay current and engaged. There will be bias some places, for sure, and you have to be more proactive and strategic, but there are plenty of teams that value their older developers very highly.

ataturk 9y ago
Haven't figured it out yet. Everything you listed is completely saturated to the point where no one is really listening to any of it. Giving free talks is not making money, it is navel gazing and pie in the sky. It might lead to interesting work, it might not. I get a kick out of all these sites like http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ because it is quite obvious that the "meta" startup is the money-maker and none of the actual companies that represent the content gross dollar one. It's bullshit. I also very much appreciate the comment about stem being held up by the software development field--they feed the lie that getting a developer job is a ticket to riches while it is merely a ticket to being middle class and mostly frustrated while everything else is burning down around you--they encourage boys to be programmers and girls to be nurses and call it good work without ever questioning what has happened to our economy. And for those of you who say "management" I say: The funnel isn't even 1 in 10 and they only take yes men (and often yes women are preferred), not people who think outside of the box or who would actually bring real diversity of thought to the process because that would be icky and dangerous. There is rampant conformity everywhere. So you see, in many ways, it's worse than a dead end--it's a promise of salvation that ends up being a kick in the teeth, which is worse because it builds hope in people only to beat them with it later on.

ataturk 9y ago

Haven't figured it out yet. Everything you listed is completely saturated to the point where no one is really listening to any of it. Giving free talks is not making money, it is navel gazing and pie in the sky. It might lead to interesting work, it might not. I get a kick out of all these sites like http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ because it is quite obvious that the "meta" startup is the money-maker and none of the actual companies that represent the content gross dollar one. It's bullshit. I also very much appreciate the comment about stem being held up by the software development field--they feed the lie that getting a developer job is a ticket to riches while it is merely a ticket to being middle class and mostly frustrated while everything else is burning down around you--they encourage boys to be programmers and girls to be nurses and call it good work without ever questioning what has happened to our economy. And for those of you who say "management" I say: The funnel isn't even 1 in 10 and they only take yes men (and often yes women are preferred), not people who think outside of the box or who would actually bring real diversity of thought to the process because that would be icky and dangerous. There is rampant conformity everywhere. So you see, in many ways, it's worse than a dead end--it's a promise of salvation that ends up being a kick in the teeth, which is worse because it builds hope in people only to beat them with it later on.