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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

This is my biggest fear as I enter my 30s in a number of months. I've been programming professionally since I was 20 and for fun since 10 - I can't imagine having to do something else, it's what I was born to do. I'm still relatively young but I just got married and the long hours and complete commitment I used to wear as a badge of honor no longer seems appealing.

Am I going to be able to do this for the rest of my career? I honestly doubt it, but I have no idea what I would do instead. My father was a draftsman for years and made good money but the market for draftsmen completely dropped out and he spent the last fifteen years of his career unlocking doors at a school. I have such a strong desire to stay relevant but I can't spend nearly as much time studying as I used to even a year or two ago. Sigh.

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You'll be fine.

I'm a few years ahead of you. I had the same fears. I was newly married and didn't feel like I was ahead of the game. I'm now 33 and have a house and two kids. It's a trip but I'm still a programmer somehow.

Companies come and go. They go on huge hiring sprees and then either go under or layoff people in a few years. Few, if any, will invest in you long-term or care about the stability of your family. So don't count on having a career path the resembles anything like what your parents or grandparents enjoyed.

"Retirement," doesn't seem like something on the menu for people in our generation or the ones to come.

So plan for it yourself. Education is your best, first defense. Study the right things (Maths should be the top of the list IMO). Next plan to save everything you can and spread it out into investments in a good balance of stocks and bonds. If you decide to have kids start an education fund right away and look into any grants or assistance you can get from your local government to kick-start it; if they do better than you in life then chances are your retirement will be fairly comfortable.

You can still stay sharp. You just have to change the yardstick. My young friends always talk about the latest languages or frameworks but it always comes back to data structures and transformations. I've just learned to be more picky about how I spend my time because once we started having kids I've had far less of it to waste.

I think this is solid advice. I continue learning by picking problems/inconveniences I encounter while working during the day, and then doing whatever research is required to make those things less inconvenient. In the process of researching the problem space, I'm often introduced to new programming concepts and tools that I would have otherwise never known about. Overall, I find it easier to learn new things if I have a real problem I'm trying to solve.

SV programmers need to worry about turning 30 these days? I'm 29, two years professional software dev experience (+5 years university), got my Masters degree last year. I really can't fathom a world where employers would consider me too old. (Europe).

I was more looking ahead into my 40s and 50s. I feel pretty comfortable that I'll have work well into my 40s but after that who can say?

You have to learn to just put in your 8 hours and go home. If you're working more than 40 hours you will not be any more productive than if you worked just 40. If anyone give you slack for not staying late I'd tell them to review your code.

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