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I'm approaching 50. Just a scant decade away from being old enough to tap my retirement accounts and have the OPTION to retire. These next couple of years loo

I'm approaching 50. Just a scant decade away from being old enough to tap my retirement accounts and have the OPTION to retire. These next couple of years look like they might not be fun, but overall it looks like I'm actually going to make it. For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual contributor role as I aged. During the late-2000's, I even had an early midlife crisis and earned a law degree, expecting that I would need to make a career change into IP or something. That hasn't been the case. What I think people missed is the compounding effect. The supply and demand for computer programmers seems to double every decade (maybe the interval is even shorter). With each doubling, the older cohorts become a smaller and smaller share of the whole. People look around and think, "There aren't many older programmers here", and base predictions off that observation. However, the more accurate observation would be, "There have been A LOT of younger programmers added here!". I don't believe that it's actually a zero-sum game, though. I don't know if this human resources cousin to Moore's Law will continue indefinitely, but it's certainly held up through my career. Even when it inevitably slows down, I think that just means you'll see the age cohorts balance out more over time.

milesvp 4y ago
The number I saw was something like every 5 years the number of programmers doubles. So half if all devs have less than 5 years experience. And since most new devs are more likely to be closer to college age than retirement age devs tend to skew younger than 40 (probably by a lot). https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html
- topkai22 4y ago
  I ran numbers from the BLS on occupation data a few years back. If you look at the number of programmers 25-35 in 2000 and the number of programmers in 2020 aged 45-55 you see a real and substantial decrease in absolute terms. The decrease is much larger then other professions, so its not attributable to a cohort just exiting the workforce in general. There is also a massive increase in the number of 25-35 programmers in the same time period. My interpretation is there are definitely forces that push against older programmers staying in or re-entering the profession, but they aren’t as severe as they appear to be just looking at the raw numbers. Generally, programmers who want to remain the profession are going to be about to, but it is harder to be a programmer over 40.
  - mockingbirdy 4y ago
    Here's [1] a data analysis looking into the phenomenon: "Professionals with higher cognitive ability drop out of STEM careers earlier and faster", "High-ability workers are faster learners, in all jobs. However, the relative return to ability is higher in careers that change less, because learning gains accumulate" [1]: https://whoisnnamdi.com/never-enough-developers/ https://whoisnnamdi.com/never-enough-developers/
  - Retric 4y ago
    Some of this is how easy it is to transition from programming to something else compared to other professions. Jumping from building some piece of software to being the expert on it or managing programmers to managing projects etc. This is especially tempting if someone’s skills start to diverge from what’s in demand.
twblalock 4y ago
Also, programmers are paid better than most people and early retirement is often possible. A lot of programmers don’t need to work into their 60s. In my own case, when I have enough money to retire it’s going to be hard to convince me to keep working.
- JackMorgan 4y ago
  I know quite a few engineers who simply no longer need to work ever again, and are working just for "funemployment".
  - ecpottinger 4y ago
    The difference, an engineer is told what to build and tries to do that. A programmer is told what to do, and half way thru development they have the boss show up and say 'I just read of this brilliant idea in BusinessWeek, lets add/change the code to do .....".
    - collyw 4y ago
      Except it's usually more "I just read about fantastic technology X, we need to use that". Ignoring the actually problems we have and whether technology X will solve them in any way at all.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    I would probably try to do that too, but one bad week or month, and I'd be done.
  - chucksmash 4y ago
    Funemployment is when you are not working though
    - ambrose2 4y ago
      I guess there’s both fUnemployment and Fun-employment
ransom1538 4y ago
"For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual contributor role as I aged." Programmers are in a bubble. Head over to the local grocery store. The person bagging your groceries is 63. There is no retirement plan for him - as well as most Americans. These "old" people will end up working until 70, on their feet. If I can find someone to pay me to write CRUD apps all day in whatever hipster framework, I am fine with that, no complaints here. Beats working at HomeDepot.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  A bubble as in we are not cognizant enough to recognize the benefits of investing in our skills and education so that we aren't bagging groceries at 63, or a bubble as in we should not expect our current ratio of compensation vs skill to hold out forever?
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  I had an office mate whose dream was to retire to the tools desk at HD. While brutal, there is something to working later from a health perspectice. When I was young, retirees played tennis and golf but I dont see as much of that in my cohort.
  - granshaw 4y ago
    Snide all you want about it, but the country club trend provided community and physical activity
    - therealdrag0 4y ago
      I’m only in my 30s and starting to find the idea quite attractive.
    - hindsightbias 4y ago
      That’s what I said.
w4ffl35 4y ago
the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves i can do xyz which i take once (per year? in my life?). then just decide if you like me based on personality and communication. i have over 200 repositories etc. its redundant, and random code challenges that differ from employer to employer prove next to nothing. 20 years ago it was the norm for interviewers to ask brain teasers / riddles in interviews ffs. edit: perhaps this is my own personal struggle as I did not attend University.
- derangedHorse 4y ago
  No the general sentiment is that the interview process for software engineers suck but almost no one wants to take a chance trying to develop a new way to interview. It’s somewhat understandable though since devising a new process can’t be to people focused less you inherit too much bias from the interviewer, nor can they be boiled down to a objective metric or else people may fall into inflexible dogmatic practices that use metrics that don’t directly or accurately measure a candidates ability to perform the job applied for
  - w4ffl35 4y ago
    i think it should be like this: can code / do whatever is being hired for + understads what we're building? hire. doesn't do a good job? fire. its actually based on personality + a convoluted code challenge that has no bearing on the actual job.
  - Arubis 4y ago
    That’s truer and truer the more generalized the position/hiring pool. “Developer at GiantCo” will end up doing leetcode interviews by default. Cofounding as a technical founder will be pretty much all about personal fit. Between these two extremes is a wide continuum (smaller companies, tech positions at non-tech firms, freelancing, consulting…) that’ll have different processes for finding a fit between someone with a problem and someone proposing a solution. If you truly hate the way interview processes have run for you, it’s worth considering if you feel strongly enough about it to seek a different fit in the market. You might not, and that’s fine! But alternatives do exist.
AmpsterMan 4y ago
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... The number of "jobs" added doesn't quite double, but if we think of it as "for every 4 that retire, five take their place" it would definitely feel like what you're saying.
pyuser583 4y ago
I’ve seen a lot of older programmers. They can wind up working as a team of one because they’re productive enough to do the work of an entire team. I’ve seen this a lot. Hire older dev. Older dev has decades of experience. Older dev creates new product from scratch in a couple weeks. Another issue is that mentoring is focused on junior devs by senior (6-8 years of experience) devs. So you’re less likely to have a senior dev (6-8 years experience) mentored by a dev with 20 years experience.
- justrudd 4y ago
  I’m kind of in this boat. I’ve been doing this for 25 years now (jeez). Mentoring a dev with 6 to 8 years experience is a pain in the butt (yes. I know. Not all of you). While I’ve got a pretty good memory, a lot of the times I don’t have a direct or complete answer for their question. I’ll have a tingle of a memory that is similar to their question. So I’ll give them that as a starting point and tell them how I’d approach the solving the problem. But they get frustrated that I didn’t solve their problem immediately. That I can’t point them at a blog post of Stack Overflow answer. But a dev with 1 to 3 years experience? They’ll take that non-answer and run with it. And I get it. The 1 to 3 probably has 1 maybe 2 tasks they’re working on. The 6 to 10 (to 15) has probably a half dozen things they’ve got to keep track of. Researching is probably pretty low on their list.
  - mike_ivanov 4y ago
    While I’ve got a pretty good memory, a lot of the times I don’t have a direct or complete answer for their question. I’ll have a tingle of a memory that is similar to their question. The same. Especially under pressure. Which makes it virtually impossible for me to pass an oral technical interview.
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      If you've done good work for a few decades, you have tons of former coworkers willing to hire you.
rstuart4133 4y ago
I'm the other side of 60. Quit my job and took up contracting after the founders of the firm I had been employed by for decades sold out to a firm maybe 100 times the size. I stressed out wondering if I could still cut it with the young guns. I was contracted to create the backend for a SaaS platform, from scratch. It runs on AWS, using a lot of AWS services, and is django based. The thing is - I'd never used AWS before, nor django. (I'm not sure how they chose me, to be honest.) Picking all this new stuff up at my age it's nowhere near as easy as it used to be. But the process of writing software is not just learning libraries - and the rest I have down pat now. I immediately set designing the data structures and databases, wrote a spec based on those structures and got the spec reviewed before I started (I had to pound the table to make that happen). Then head down, arse up writing code as fast as I could. I had to deliver it all without an AWS platform to run it on, or a front end to drive it - but you don't get to my age without knowing a thing or two about unit effective testing. Then after delivering, I was told it had all been changed by the UI guy, so massive refactoring. Unit tests are worth their weigh in gold when that happens. All the while I was told I was talking too long, which ramps up the pressure and self doubt even more. (But with me muttering - what did you expect when change the UI I had based the spec on without telling me, ffs.) Boy do you lean on unit tests when that happens. Then the first code drop, which was few tens of thousands of lines of code done in a few months. Which if you crunch the numbers, was 20% of the size their existing code base, delivered by one guy, in 5% of the time it took several people to develop the existing thing. Bug rate after unit tests was below 1 bug per 5k LOC. Turns out they were begrudgingly impressed by that. So right now it seems I still can match it with the young guys. Yes learning new stuff is harder and slower, but I make up for it very efficient software methodologies honed over decades, which when I can apply them for a few weeks straight leave them in the dust. The way I feel now it seems when I'm 70 pulling that sort of stunt will be impossible, so I don't have too many more job changes left in me. But at 50, you have a while to go yet son.
bdowling 4y ago
> I even had an early midlife crisis and earned a law degree Same. In my case, I paid my way through law school doing software development contract work, which paid better than entry level lawyer work. Now I do a mix of software consulting/contracting and IP technical expert work (patent/copyright infringement analysis, claim charts, etc). I enjoy doing both kinds of work, though I really enjoy legal writing and I'd like to get more into IP litigation, writing pleadings, motions, oppositions, etc.

milesvp 4y ago

The number I saw was something like every 5 years the number of programmers doubles. So half if all devs have less than 5 years experience. And since most new devs are more likely to be closer to college age than retirement age devs tend to skew younger than 40 (probably by a lot). https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html

topkai22 4y ago
I ran numbers from the BLS on occupation data a few years back. If you look at the number of programmers 25-35 in 2000 and the number of programmers in 2020 aged 45-55 you see a real and substantial decrease in absolute terms. The decrease is much larger then other professions, so its not attributable to a cohort just exiting the workforce in general. There is also a massive increase in the number of 25-35 programmers in the same time period. My interpretation is there are definitely forces that push against older programmers staying in or re-entering the profession, but they aren’t as severe as they appear to be just looking at the raw numbers. Generally, programmers who want to remain the profession are going to be about to, but it is harder to be a programmer over 40.
- mockingbirdy 4y ago
  Here's [1] a data analysis looking into the phenomenon: "Professionals with higher cognitive ability drop out of STEM careers earlier and faster", "High-ability workers are faster learners, in all jobs. However, the relative return to ability is higher in careers that change less, because learning gains accumulate" [1]: https://whoisnnamdi.com/never-enough-developers/ https://whoisnnamdi.com/never-enough-developers/
- Retric 4y ago
  Some of this is how easy it is to transition from programming to something else compared to other professions. Jumping from building some piece of software to being the expert on it or managing programmers to managing projects etc. This is especially tempting if someone’s skills start to diverge from what’s in demand.

twblalock 4y ago

Also, programmers are paid better than most people and early retirement is often possible. A lot of programmers don’t need to work into their 60s. In my own case, when I have enough money to retire it’s going to be hard to convince me to keep working.

JackMorgan 4y ago
I know quite a few engineers who simply no longer need to work ever again, and are working just for "funemployment".
- ecpottinger 4y ago
  The difference, an engineer is told what to build and tries to do that. A programmer is told what to do, and half way thru development they have the boss show up and say 'I just read of this brilliant idea in BusinessWeek, lets add/change the code to do .....".
  - collyw 4y ago
    Except it's usually more "I just read about fantastic technology X, we need to use that". Ignoring the actually problems we have and whether technology X will solve them in any way at all.
- twblalock 4y ago
  I would probably try to do that too, but one bad week or month, and I'd be done.
- chucksmash 4y ago
  Funemployment is when you are not working though
  - ambrose2 4y ago
    I guess there’s both fUnemployment and Fun-employment

ransom1538 4y ago

"For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual contributor role as I aged." Programmers are in a bubble. Head over to the local grocery store. The person bagging your groceries is 63. There is no retirement plan for him - as well as most Americans. These "old" people will end up working until 70, on their feet. If I can find someone to pay me to write CRUD apps all day in whatever hipster framework, I am fine with that, no complaints here. Beats working at HomeDepot.

soulofmischief 4y ago
A bubble as in we are not cognizant enough to recognize the benefits of investing in our skills and education so that we aren't bagging groceries at 63, or a bubble as in we should not expect our current ratio of compensation vs skill to hold out forever?
hindsightbias 4y ago
I had an office mate whose dream was to retire to the tools desk at HD. While brutal, there is something to working later from a health perspectice. When I was young, retirees played tennis and golf but I dont see as much of that in my cohort.
- granshaw 4y ago
  Snide all you want about it, but the country club trend provided community and physical activity
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    I’m only in my 30s and starting to find the idea quite attractive.
  - hindsightbias 4y ago
    That’s what I said.

w4ffl35 4y ago

the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves i can do xyz which i take once (per year? in my life?). then just decide if you like me based on personality and communication. i have over 200 repositories etc. its redundant, and random code challenges that differ from employer to employer prove next to nothing. 20 years ago it was the norm for interviewers to ask brain teasers / riddles in interviews ffs. edit: perhaps this is my own personal struggle as I did not attend University.

derangedHorse 4y ago
No the general sentiment is that the interview process for software engineers suck but almost no one wants to take a chance trying to develop a new way to interview. It’s somewhat understandable though since devising a new process can’t be to people focused less you inherit too much bias from the interviewer, nor can they be boiled down to a objective metric or else people may fall into inflexible dogmatic practices that use metrics that don’t directly or accurately measure a candidates ability to perform the job applied for
- w4ffl35 4y ago
  i think it should be like this: can code / do whatever is being hired for + understads what we're building? hire. doesn't do a good job? fire. its actually based on personality + a convoluted code challenge that has no bearing on the actual job.
- Arubis 4y ago
  That’s truer and truer the more generalized the position/hiring pool. “Developer at GiantCo” will end up doing leetcode interviews by default. Cofounding as a technical founder will be pretty much all about personal fit. Between these two extremes is a wide continuum (smaller companies, tech positions at non-tech firms, freelancing, consulting…) that’ll have different processes for finding a fit between someone with a problem and someone proposing a solution. If you truly hate the way interview processes have run for you, it’s worth considering if you feel strongly enough about it to seek a different fit in the market. You might not, and that’s fine! But alternatives do exist.

AmpsterMan 4y ago

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... The number of "jobs" added doesn't quite double, but if we think of it as "for every 4 that retire, five take their place" it would definitely feel like what you're saying.

pyuser583 4y ago

I’ve seen a lot of older programmers. They can wind up working as a team of one because they’re productive enough to do the work of an entire team. I’ve seen this a lot. Hire older dev. Older dev has decades of experience. Older dev creates new product from scratch in a couple weeks. Another issue is that mentoring is focused on junior devs by senior (6-8 years of experience) devs. So you’re less likely to have a senior dev (6-8 years experience) mentored by a dev with 20 years experience.

justrudd 4y ago
I’m kind of in this boat. I’ve been doing this for 25 years now (jeez). Mentoring a dev with 6 to 8 years experience is a pain in the butt (yes. I know. Not all of you). While I’ve got a pretty good memory, a lot of the times I don’t have a direct or complete answer for their question. I’ll have a tingle of a memory that is similar to their question. So I’ll give them that as a starting point and tell them how I’d approach the solving the problem. But they get frustrated that I didn’t solve their problem immediately. That I can’t point them at a blog post of Stack Overflow answer. But a dev with 1 to 3 years experience? They’ll take that non-answer and run with it. And I get it. The 1 to 3 probably has 1 maybe 2 tasks they’re working on. The 6 to 10 (to 15) has probably a half dozen things they’ve got to keep track of. Researching is probably pretty low on their list.
- mike_ivanov 4y ago
  While I’ve got a pretty good memory, a lot of the times I don’t have a direct or complete answer for their question. I’ll have a tingle of a memory that is similar to their question. The same. Especially under pressure. Which makes it virtually impossible for me to pass an oral technical interview.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    If you've done good work for a few decades, you have tons of former coworkers willing to hire you.

rstuart4133 4y ago

I'm the other side of 60. Quit my job and took up contracting after the founders of the firm I had been employed by for decades sold out to a firm maybe 100 times the size. I stressed out wondering if I could still cut it with the young guns. I was contracted to create the backend for a SaaS platform, from scratch. It runs on AWS, using a lot of AWS services, and is django based. The thing is - I'd never used AWS before, nor django. (I'm not sure how they chose me, to be honest.) Picking all this new stuff up at my age it's nowhere near as easy as it used to be. But the process of writing software is not just learning libraries - and the rest I have down pat now. I immediately set designing the data structures and databases, wrote a spec based on those structures and got the spec reviewed before I started (I had to pound the table to make that happen). Then head down, arse up writing code as fast as I could. I had to deliver it all without an AWS platform to run it on, or a front end to drive it - but you don't get to my age without knowing a thing or two about unit effective testing. Then after delivering, I was told it had all been changed by the UI guy, so massive refactoring. Unit tests are worth their weigh in gold when that happens. All the while I was told I was talking too long, which ramps up the pressure and self doubt even more. (But with me muttering - what did you expect when change the UI I had based the spec on without telling me, ffs.) Boy do you lean on unit tests when that happens. Then the first code drop, which was few tens of thousands of lines of code done in a few months. Which if you crunch the numbers, was 20% of the size their existing code base, delivered by one guy, in 5% of the time it took several people to develop the existing thing. Bug rate after unit tests was below 1 bug per 5k LOC. Turns out they were begrudgingly impressed by that. So right now it seems I still can match it with the young guys. Yes learning new stuff is harder and slower, but I make up for it very efficient software methodologies honed over decades, which when I can apply them for a few weeks straight leave them in the dust. The way I feel now it seems when I'm 70 pulling that sort of stunt will be impossible, so I don't have too many more job changes left in me. But at 50, you have a while to go yet son.

bdowling 4y ago

> I even had an early midlife crisis and earned a law degree Same. In my case, I paid my way through law school doing software development contract work, which paid better than entry level lawyer work. Now I do a mix of software consulting/contracting and IP technical expert work (patent/copyright infringement analysis, claim charts, etc). I enjoy doing both kinds of work, though I really enjoy legal writing and I'd like to get more into IP litigation, writing pleadings, motions, oppositions, etc.