I think there's a far simpler explanation. Dev jobs are heavily skewed towards men and these stats generally tend to be US-centric (and even more skewed toward

I think there's a far simpler explanation. Dev jobs are heavily skewed towards men and these stats generally tend to be US-centric (and even more skewed towards men) for obvious reasons. As of 2015 the typical age for men in the US to have their first child was just a bit over 30 and the trend was this age moving up rather than down. The glorified image of a developer sleeping at their desk, going to meetups after work, coding at home and building their entire life around their job falls apart as soon as you start a family and for many men becoming a father is a major shift in their understanding of their place in life and their goals. As we tend to roughly associate with people in our age bracket this also has a knock-on effect for childfree developers whose peers suddenly no longer share the tween dev lifestyle. Additionally for some people heavily buying into the lifestyle around 30 is probably the time they'll first hit burnout. The "dark matter developers" (the mythical silent majority who just do their 9-to-5 and then go home to their private life away from development) have been a common talking point for decades, so it doesn't even have to be that all the devs hitting 35 just shift career tracks into management or "go rogue" and start their own companies. They just turn invisible to the metrics that so reliably work for tweens. If they've been doing their job for 3 decades or more, chances also are they won't be on the "cool" tech stacks that garner the most attention. I know that some people like to pretend the glorified behavior I described is a thing of the dot com bubble and no longer relevant, but I'm just over 35 now (and incidentally rarely ever use SO anymore) and that's not only how I spent a part of my 20s but I also (pre-pandemic) kept running into young developers who still did much the same, although for those working at the more well-known companies a lot of the "sleeping in the office" took the form of Google-style on-site gyms, cafeterias and laundry services. They didn't literally sleep at their desks but their place of work and their profession defined their identity more than anything else. [0]: https://www.livescience.com/60278-american-dads-age.html https://www.livescience.com/60278-american-dads-age.html