The number of programmers who leave the ranks after age 30 is staggering.
Some go to management, some leave for another career type, some are fired. For whatever reason, there's a sharp decline after the 20s and it only accelerates. Programmers retiring from the job at the normal age is a rarity. (It didn't used to be this way.)
I am less driven by the prospect of becoming an old expensive programmer, and more concerned about missing out on gaining management experience. I have conversed with many programmers who express concern that they have no management aspirations, and yet the longer they remain pure programmers, they find they have fewer options as they age, instead, as one might imagine, more.
Maybe it's because it's harder to convince a 40-year old programmer to work bullshit hours for a few slices of free pizza.
Where are these abundant management jobs, ready to absorb every programmer over 30? Personally, having had several awful managers who were worker-bee programmers, I find nothing worse than the idea that programmers should move into management. Good managing is a completely different skill set from programming.
You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30.
What an awful attitude to have. Code monkey? Personally, I was just getting good at about 30.
And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old.
It's been my experience that good products tend to end up living to ten or more years. And new technologies tend to only get deeply explored and solid after something like ten years.
This is scary. I'm 30, and I can't imagine doing anything else with my life. I have no formal CS education, but coding is huge part of my identity. I would do it even if it meant being poor. Of the developers that I know that are older and went into management, most of them did so because they had children and family and didn't have the same level of free time to keep up with new tech or were just burnt out.
For once I thought you meant 30+ of programming experience. I am 32 and still program on daily basis. I do not see any reason to quit or code less, infact given a chance I would like to code more.
In terms of "where do they go?", I would think that a reasonable amount of "older" programmers move into management or other more strategic positions in the production chain, where they are not actually doing any of the coding, but are still working on software projects.
I'm in my late 30s and have spent the last few years transitioning more into product management. I'm still coding sometimes, but less and less. In fact, I am pleased that a lot of my coding has gone back to being recreational (outside of work).
I'm reaching a point in my career where I feel that my skills and knowledge are put to better use helping other junior programmers do their work better, rather than doing the work myself.
Besides, no matter how much experience and knowledge I have, there will always be a 20 year old who is willing to work twice as many hours for half the pay, and they will eventually get to more or less the same result I would. Why would I want to compete against that?
I'd rather be that 20 year old's boss or advisor, and help him/her work smarter and learn faster..
Maybe it's that the explosion in programming careers coincided with a bunch of kids that left school in the run-up to the last tech bubble? They are mostly in that range. Those are the ones who were growing into the web world (and were more likely to stay technically engaged).
I expect we'll continue to see that age slide a bit, though due to the senior programmer income plateau (and supervisory experience accrual), you also have the move to management effect. Many good programmers will become leads, architects, managers etc.
I have no idea why you would think a programming career ever ends in relation to an age? It may also be that people 35-40 don't want to work at companies or with the lifestyle you see around you?
Do you mind saying how old you are? One of my fears is if you're an programmer, you either need to move into management or quit being a programmer because of age bias. I prefer coding over management though.
This is a great point and one I have mentioned to friends. We are only now getting to the point where there are a lot of older (>35) programmers. I'm sure there is some ageism/easier to exploit younger workers happening, but on whole given the current demand I don't think it really saves companies much money.
For an anecdotal data point, where I work now I'm one of the younger guys at 37.
In the companies I have worked at, there were always a bunch of 45+ programmers who were quite good at it. Most of them seem to have started only in their early 20s. (Anecdotal of course)
The article is not very accurate. Age and experience don't necessarily correlate to each other. There are a lot of programmers in their mid-twenties with more than 10 years of experience. On the other hand a lot of the 40+ workers did work with only one kind of technology all the time. Or they have been promoted into management positions 10 years ago and know shit about whats going on today.
Don't get me wrong, older developers with the same passion for computers as todays kids are extremely valuable. But they are also very rare.
That should have happened long ago. I did CS and programming as high school subjects and am past 50. The tens of thousands of extra people trained up to solve the millenium bug crisis (that mostly didn't happen) are probably around 40 now.
Of my tech friends around my age a lot have drifted into other things - often dramatically different.
Some because they were sick of IT (often for similar reasons), and some because it was time for a change. Quite a few ran into ageism (agencies and HR rather than the actual techie people as a rule) and staying programming past 40 is somehow seen as failing your career rather than going into management.
I am 35, soon 36. I have worked as project manager for 3 years when I was around 30, then quit the job because it bored me to death. This wasn't career for me. Now I am developing a lot. I have a team, but its so small that I write a lot of code myself.
I enjoy planning and developing systems. I have seen all aspects of working in small (~100 persons) and big companies (160.000 persons). Why should I switch to management when I am good with what I do? Being a developer is not only a step in career, its also passion. Being a manager is not the next step, its a completely different job. You plan deadlines and HR and speak with customers and their contracts. This is not the next level, its something different. You can do this also without being a software developer in a previous life.
There are not that many older devs I know. The people of whome I speak are between 40 and 50. These folks are truly experts in their domains. I learn a lot when speaking with them. In some cases 40+ devs act and work like 20+ devs: they learn. Imagine what you can do with a knowledge grown by 20 years? Age really doesn't matter, except you want to do a completely different job after your software development time.
I have not suffered any salary drops so far. I could have steadily increased my income. However I decided before around 3 years to stop this and work as a freelancer. My time is limited, my rate is pretty normal and so I know pretty much what is possible in a year and what not. You could say, I have limited myself to a certain income. On the other hand since then I only worked on projects I liked. I have never written a single line of code of something I didn't like (except that one time, but I fired the customer).
For me, being an "old" dev with 35 as you maybe would call it I have realized that I found my high in my career: the full freedom of what I do and what not.
I get a lot of offers because of my experiences and I have the choice. Please consider "earning this choice" as an important point in your career. Many can have more money; a few can have the freedom.
That said, the 30+ or 40+ devs I know are not shy to switch jobs. I know a few who think like that, but well: I was 32 when I quit my job. Now I am 35 I don't need "safety". With 33 my son was born, I still didn't feel like that.
If you would ask me: don't worry about your career. Spend your time with the things you like. Life is to short to waste it with people who tell you what a "great career" is.
I'm 53. I still program full time (embedded C++, but I may be moving into Android soon - like, this year). I've spent most of my career in embedded systems, which is kind of a different environment from most of programming.
My last two jobs, I've told them straight up in the interview that my career goal is to never be a manager. Both times I got hired anyway.
On my current job, I had to write the central piece that tied all the other pieces together in six months. There wasn't time for a learning curve. Experience is a big advantage in that kind of situation; I had 24 years, and it helped.
I can't help but wonder where this might leave someone such as myself, who is over 40, but relatively new to professional software development. I've programmed for years as a hobby, but was educated in a different field and have only recently decided to pursue programming work for a living. Not only am I old, but I also have little experience compared to others my age.
I'm 53. I've been a programmer for 30 years, mostly in embedded systems. My explicit career goal is to never become a manager.
As you get older/more experienced, it becomes harder to find jobs. When "senior developer" means 5-7 years of experience, what do you do with 30 years? It gets hard to find places that will pay for that experience.
I've found, though, that there are jobs. You won't be switching jobs every 1-2 years - more like every 5-10. "Big engineering" places seem to value the experience more than, say, web places. (This may be just because I'm in embedded systems - there's not much use for that in web services.)
Your advantage isn't how fast you can crank out lines of code. It's how fast you can deliver real value to the business (what else are they paying you for)? Along those lines, one of the most valuable things is the bugs you don't write and the bad design decisions you don't make.
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