How many 55 year old solo independent devs do you see out there in the wild? Lots. Quick question? Would you prefer to be a 55 year old salaried senior dev,

How many 55 year old solo independent devs do you see out there in the wild? Lots. Quick question? Would you prefer to be a 55 year old salaried senior dev, or a 55 year old specialist consultant? Same answer if you're one of those two, but currently between gigs and looking for work? Being the "old guy" looking for a job is how you get discriminated against. "Why is this guy on the market now?" "How many years does he have left?" "Is he still any good?" Being the "old guy" specialist consultant means you're going to be really good at the thing they need to bring you in to do. You're also really expensive, which just reinforces how good you must be. Nobody is going to hold your lack of inexperience against you when they have a problem their kids can't solve. No need for the specialty to be Geriatric COBOL or FORTRAN either. A 55 year old Javascript guy today might have 24 years experience in it, and can certainly teach your front-end guys a few things about writing code that runs in browsers. So yeah, when the time comes, make sure you're either consulting or running your own company.