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If you love what you're doing now and don't ever want to change jobs, great: you've reached the end of your career, even if it plays out over many decades. Eve

If you love what you're doing now and don't ever want to change jobs, great: you've reached the end of your career, even if it plays out over many decades. Even if you love what you do and you don't want to change anything, the world around you is going to have other ideas. Especially in tech.

AlwaysRock 5y ago
Eh. To some extend yes but largely, no. If you loved COBOL all your life you can still find COBOL work. It's harder now but its out there. You're just not going to be working at a cool start up doing it. So if part of what you love is working at cool cutting edge companies then yeah you have to keep learning new cutting edge things. But if you just want to bang out code in your preferred language there will almost always be a company somewhere hiring for that.
- onion2k 5y ago
  The beauty of your argument is that it's unprovable. No matter what language someone might suggest they enjoy that they can't find a job writing any more, you'll always be able to counter saying "Ah, but you've not looked hard enough! They're out there!" It'll always be the candidates fault for not scouring the world searching for that AP/L role or Shockwave Flash advert. The assertion that no matter what tech you want to work with there'll certainly be a job writing it somewhere doesn't seem right to me. Not because there won't be some uniquely rare role out there, but because very few people want literally any job, anywhere, on any salary, under any conditions just because they get to a specific language. Unless there's good jobs writing it that you would actually accept then the language might as well be dead.
  - AlwaysRock 5y ago
    Sure... I guess nothing is provable. I know COBOL devs. They say its harder and harder to find gigs but they just tend to stay in their jobs longer now. I have a relative that will probably retire in his current COBOL gig.
    - hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
      Not a bad thing. One becomes an expert in one niche domain (I wouldn't say COBOL is niche but you know) and comfortable sit on top of it. One can just work maybe 15, 20 years and retire early.
      - onion2k 5y ago
        You also need to be aware that there will be massive pressure on businesses to remove your job though. Every single app written in a lanuage that has a diminishing number of people able to work on is a huge risk. The only reason COBOL devs are still able to fine work is because businesses like banks didn't have the foresight to remove that dependency early enough - they've been running their legacy code for far too long and now it's hard to replace. Its unlikely that they'll be keen make the same mistake again.
        hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
        Yes I understand. But consider two points: 1) People who are familiar with mainframes and COBOL are probably well into their career maturity (at least 40+) and because of the luxury salary they probably do not mind an early retirement, and 2) Even when bank moves it moves slowly. But I do think that the whole COBOL thing is coming to an end...maybe we need to find something still hot but hated by everyone, for example...Java?
        AlwaysRock 5y ago
        > Its unlikely that they'll be keen make the same mistake again. Companies learning from their mistakes? Large companies learning from their mistakes? Companies learning from the mistakes made 10-20 years ago by a different CEO/CTO/Leadership team? You believe it companies ability to change more than I do.
jimmaswell 5y ago
It depends how dynamically you can define "what you're doing now." I don't really care what I do so long as it's remote with a good work-life balance and pays well, and I'll do what it takes to keep up with tech stacks. I expect this to carry me just fine to retirement.
- amyjess 5y ago
  Same. I've done SRE/platform/infrastructure engineering my whole career, and I intend to keep doing that until I die or retire. Platforms can and will change, but there will always be a need for engineers to work on them separately from the application code. I don't think I've ever worked on the same exact stack at any two different companies, but what I do has always been in the same ballpark.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

Eh. To some extend yes but largely, no. If you loved COBOL all your life you can still find COBOL work. It's harder now but its out there. You're just not going to be working at a cool start up doing it. So if part of what you love is working at cool cutting edge companies then yeah you have to keep learning new cutting edge things. But if you just want to bang out code in your preferred language there will almost always be a company somewhere hiring for that.

onion2k 5y ago
The beauty of your argument is that it's unprovable. No matter what language someone might suggest they enjoy that they can't find a job writing any more, you'll always be able to counter saying "Ah, but you've not looked hard enough! They're out there!" It'll always be the candidates fault for not scouring the world searching for that AP/L role or Shockwave Flash advert. The assertion that no matter what tech you want to work with there'll certainly be a job writing it somewhere doesn't seem right to me. Not because there won't be some uniquely rare role out there, but because very few people want literally any job, anywhere, on any salary, under any conditions just because they get to a specific language. Unless there's good jobs writing it that you would actually accept then the language might as well be dead.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  Sure... I guess nothing is provable. I know COBOL devs. They say its harder and harder to find gigs but they just tend to stay in their jobs longer now. I have a relative that will probably retire in his current COBOL gig.
  - hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
    Not a bad thing. One becomes an expert in one niche domain (I wouldn't say COBOL is niche but you know) and comfortable sit on top of it. One can just work maybe 15, 20 years and retire early.
    - onion2k 5y ago
      You also need to be aware that there will be massive pressure on businesses to remove your job though. Every single app written in a lanuage that has a diminishing number of people able to work on is a huge risk. The only reason COBOL devs are still able to fine work is because businesses like banks didn't have the foresight to remove that dependency early enough - they've been running their legacy code for far too long and now it's hard to replace. Its unlikely that they'll be keen make the same mistake again.
      - hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
        Yes I understand. But consider two points: 1) People who are familiar with mainframes and COBOL are probably well into their career maturity (at least 40+) and because of the luxury salary they probably do not mind an early retirement, and 2) Even when bank moves it moves slowly. But I do think that the whole COBOL thing is coming to an end...maybe we need to find something still hot but hated by everyone, for example...Java?
      - AlwaysRock 5y ago
        > Its unlikely that they'll be keen make the same mistake again. Companies learning from their mistakes? Large companies learning from their mistakes? Companies learning from the mistakes made 10-20 years ago by a different CEO/CTO/Leadership team? You believe it companies ability to change more than I do.

jimmaswell 5y ago

It depends how dynamically you can define "what you're doing now." I don't really care what I do so long as it's remote with a good work-life balance and pays well, and I'll do what it takes to keep up with tech stacks. I expect this to carry me just fine to retirement.

amyjess 5y ago
Same. I've done SRE/platform/infrastructure engineering my whole career, and I intend to keep doing that until I die or retire. Platforms can and will change, but there will always be a need for engineers to work on them separately from the application code. I don't think I've ever worked on the same exact stack at any two different companies, but what I do has always been in the same ballpark.