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I think this article is overlooking the most important reason for this. Most senior developers have plenty of assets and are retiring or taking a long vacation

I think this article is overlooking the most important reason for this. Most senior developers have plenty of assets and are retiring or taking a long vacation with stock/crypto/real-estate gains from the past year. Some are rolling out their own businesses sure, but it's a terrible time to start a business now. Wages are skyrocketing, supply chains are overbooked, inflation makes it impossible to secure long contracts on predictable terms, and the passive income mania fuelled by the banks makes working on fixed income unappealing.

JohnFen 5y ago
> it's a terrible time to start a business now Hard disagree. I think this is one of those moments it's an unusually good time to start a business. It has challenges to be sure, but they're manageable, and I see more opportunity around me than I've seen in decades.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  If your business plan includes shipments from China at specific costs or times, or if your business plan needs reliable workers at $18/hour, you may run into trouble. Otherwise, yes
notacoward 5y ago
That's exactly what happened with me. When people ask why I retired "so early" (I'm 56) my first answer is always that I did it because I could. I was fortunate to have accrued enough that I didn't have to keep doing something that had become more burdensome than satisfying, so I stopped. As to why it had become more burdensome, some of the OP's points ring pretty true. Software development is much more rushed than it used to be, which is not at all to say it's more efficient or productive. Everybody wants to rush into coding without having a real anchored discussion about approaches and pitfalls, then rush into coding the next thing before all the really "interesting" bugs that live in the interstices between unit-testable components are dealt with. Yeah, I know the excuses, and I'm sure they'll be repeated in replies here. Basically they all come down to "don't worry we'll rewrite it next year anyway" which is not entirely wrong but I got tired of being disparaged for wanting to be even a tiny bit further on the "get it right the first time" side. And then there's the ageism. Like other -isms it's never as simple as "I hate X" but more about failing to consider X. Open-plan offices are more problematic for older people because of hearing and personal-comfort issues. Mandatory oncall shifts are more burdensome for people with kids than those without. A senior developer trying to apply an idea learned on other systems will often be blocked because those systems are assumed to be irrelevant, but a junior developer reinventing the exact same idea in the context of the current system will get a bonus or promotion. To some extent it's just good old NIH, but when it consistently gives one group an advantage over another it's discrimination. "Only people who grew up in this environment can add value to it" is ageism. A lot of these issues are much more prevalent at certain companies, notably FAANG, so arguably they could be improved by going elsewhere. Which would have meant going through another one or more BS interview processes for what was likely to be a slight improvement because everybody imitates FAANG. "I prefer not to" as Bartleby the scrivener famously said, and I suspect that's the same conclusion many other senior developers reach. We've made it so that development usually becomes more and more of a chore as people become more senior (no it didn't used to be that way), so we shouldn't be surprised when they take the earliest exit.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Raising money also seems a lot easier though. I’m astonished at what has raised 2-5 million.
- notacoward 5y ago
  For most of the time I was at startups, a $30M round or a $100M exit was great news. A goal to shoot for. Now the first would be considered a red flag and the second a failure, and it's not all because of inflation or growth of the industry. Everyone has unicorn fever, which favors certain kinds of startups over others. The result is a glut of some things and a shortage of others. It's a kind of imbalance we distributed-systems folks try to avoid, for good reason. The consequences of screwing it up at the level of the whole industry - let alone all of society - are even more severe.
datavirtue 5y ago
I have been studying pizza. I became obsessed when trying to perfect the craft and found out how crazy technical it is to do it right. (On a side note the pizza industry lost it's top dough scientist to COVID, but he thankfully openly shared all his knowledge) I have always had it in the back of my mind that I was going to start a pizzeria and now the writing is on the wall. My sister has a small novelty shop (pipes, crystals, etc) and recently moved to a good location in her community. It blew up immediately from the foot traffic in that location. She went from welfare to six figures overnight. I'm eyeing the same mall for my pizzeria. There is a constant string of anxiety inducing bullshit that occurs in corporate America, more so now for devs and especially senior devs like myself. Ladle on mounds of boring work and it becomes unbearable. I just want to move to farm country and start a takeout restaurant. (I used to manage restaurants and run kitchens in a past life, it's in my DNA)
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
> Wages are skyrocketing, supply chains are overbooked, inflation makes it impossible to secure long contracts on predictable terms, and the passive income mania fuelled by the banks makes working on fixed income unappealing Or, you could look for opportunities in all of those statements.

JohnFen 5y ago

> it's a terrible time to start a business now Hard disagree. I think this is one of those moments it's an unusually good time to start a business. It has challenges to be sure, but they're manageable, and I see more opportunity around me than I've seen in decades.

gitfan86 5y ago
If your business plan includes shipments from China at specific costs or times, or if your business plan needs reliable workers at $18/hour, you may run into trouble. Otherwise, yes

notacoward 5y ago

That's exactly what happened with me. When people ask why I retired "so early" (I'm 56) my first answer is always that I did it because I could. I was fortunate to have accrued enough that I didn't have to keep doing something that had become more burdensome than satisfying, so I stopped. As to why it had become more burdensome, some of the OP's points ring pretty true. Software development is much more rushed than it used to be, which is not at all to say it's more efficient or productive. Everybody wants to rush into coding without having a real anchored discussion about approaches and pitfalls, then rush into coding the next thing before all the really "interesting" bugs that live in the interstices between unit-testable components are dealt with. Yeah, I know the excuses, and I'm sure they'll be repeated in replies here. Basically they all come down to "don't worry we'll rewrite it next year anyway" which is not entirely wrong but I got tired of being disparaged for wanting to be even a tiny bit further on the "get it right the first time" side. And then there's the ageism. Like other -isms it's never as simple as "I hate X" but more about failing to consider X. Open-plan offices are more problematic for older people because of hearing and personal-comfort issues. Mandatory oncall shifts are more burdensome for people with kids than those without. A senior developer trying to apply an idea learned on other systems will often be blocked because those systems are assumed to be irrelevant, but a junior developer reinventing the exact same idea in the context of the current system will get a bonus or promotion. To some extent it's just good old NIH, but when it consistently gives one group an advantage over another it's discrimination. "Only people who grew up in this environment can add value to it" is ageism. A lot of these issues are much more prevalent at certain companies, notably FAANG, so arguably they could be improved by going elsewhere. Which would have meant going through another one or more BS interview processes for what was likely to be a slight improvement because everybody imitates FAANG. "I prefer not to" as Bartleby the scrivener famously said, and I suspect that's the same conclusion many other senior developers reach. We've made it so that development usually becomes more and more of a chore as people become more senior (no it didn't used to be that way), so we shouldn't be surprised when they take the earliest exit.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Raising money also seems a lot easier though. I’m astonished at what has raised 2-5 million.

notacoward 5y ago
For most of the time I was at startups, a $30M round or a $100M exit was great news. A goal to shoot for. Now the first would be considered a red flag and the second a failure, and it's not all because of inflation or growth of the industry. Everyone has unicorn fever, which favors certain kinds of startups over others. The result is a glut of some things and a shortage of others. It's a kind of imbalance we distributed-systems folks try to avoid, for good reason. The consequences of screwing it up at the level of the whole industry - let alone all of society - are even more severe.

datavirtue 5y ago

I have been studying pizza. I became obsessed when trying to perfect the craft and found out how crazy technical it is to do it right. (On a side note the pizza industry lost it's top dough scientist to COVID, but he thankfully openly shared all his knowledge) I have always had it in the back of my mind that I was going to start a pizzeria and now the writing is on the wall. My sister has a small novelty shop (pipes, crystals, etc) and recently moved to a good location in her community. It blew up immediately from the foot traffic in that location. She went from welfare to six figures overnight. I'm eyeing the same mall for my pizzeria. There is a constant string of anxiety inducing bullshit that occurs in corporate America, more so now for devs and especially senior devs like myself. Ladle on mounds of boring work and it becomes unbearable. I just want to move to farm country and start a takeout restaurant. (I used to manage restaurants and run kitchens in a past life, it's in my DNA)

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago

> Wages are skyrocketing, supply chains are overbooked, inflation makes it impossible to secure long contracts on predictable terms, and the passive income mania fuelled by the banks makes working on fixed income unappealing Or, you could look for opportunities in all of those statements.