When Do Programmers Retire? Is 35 the End?
betterprogramming.pub
betterprogramming.pub
This is kind of mentioned with "According to Evans’ data, there are around 24 million developers worldwide and this will increase by 20% to nearly 30 million by 2024." but not followed up on - guess what age represents virtually all of those new positions?
But going as far as "35 is the end" is a joke. People doing this job will continue on higher positions. If they were actually being replaced by entry-level people at current place, there's a lot of places that look for experience instead.
This is pure anecdata, but I don't think I know a single software developer who was unable to continue in the industry past 35 as commonly claimed.
On the other hand, I know tons of former financial employees who became unemployable in the industry at 30 or even earlier.
Ageism may be alive in startups, but in technology as a whole, it doesn't really seem to be a big deal if you are up to date on your skills.
I did the startup thing a bit, it was fun, but I'm mostly over it. I have other things in life I want to focus my time and energy on.
Tech industry is ageist. There's a reason why senior+ programmers find it hard to recover their career when detached from the BigTech company they have been long working at. Doubly so, if they work at a company that stack-ranks them at the bottom when they already are on the wrong-side of the 30.
I don't see at all this supposed ageism in software, is this skew coming from startup people? Because in startups, yeah, I see mostly youngsters but that's due to the work environment and pay, I refuse to work in startups for the foreseeable future as I did when I was 20-something. The pay is shit, the hours can be grueling, expectations and stress are way way too high for my current lifestyle. Of course, it can be your golden ticket but it's such a major risk that I don't feel I would like to waste 5 years on it.
With older people having less time and seeing less point in doing it.
That’s not to say that I know everything after those decades. But for the things that are more “I forgot the details, yet again” (or “I didn’t really know that detail but now it has become important”), such as for example “what are the exact semantics of that uncommon assembly instruction” or “what does the C standard define here”, it’s well advised to just look into an official source instead.
I'm well over 60, and doing my best work.
It’s a big world. It’s not all the same “scene”.
I don’t write that much code anymore even for fun. But the little code I do write is because it absolutely needs to be state-of-the-art, which is only possible with deep experience. I’ve seen this with other programmers as well; as they get older they write far less code, but the code they write tends to be code that is critically important and only a small number of people have the experience and skill to write. They pick their code writing battles.
My advice to CS majors is that you need to make enough to retire by 35 as that's when you stand a good chance of being tossed on the trash heap.
Alternatively - win the startup lottery and either cash out or continue as principal.
I agree with this. CS is a GREAT career when you're in your mid 20's, making 6 figures with just a bachelors, while your cohorts are still taking on even more loans in graduate school or earning a fraction of your salary down in the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder.
The trick is to live as frugally as you can while making the big bucks throughout your 20s and early 30s, invest it, and plan to never touch it. With some market luck, you can pretty much guarantee a safe retirement by late 50's or early 60s, even if you decide (or are forced) to change careers to something less lucrative, and especially if (very likely) your salary won't grow much faster than inflation (and less than COL increases) once you're past 35. This is in contrast, BTW, to most other professionals like lawyers, doctors, academics, etc. who tend to earn more and more each year until mid 50's.
Because the reality is that most of us are not going to be the top 10% who will be courted by FAANGS well into our 40's, with offers of $500K plus equity, to lead projects.
Instead, you're going to hit a glass ceiling in your mid 30's and unless you move to management or start your own consultancy, you're going to be competing with 28 year olds who can write CRUD apps in the shiny new frameworks better than you at 2/3 the salary. Which is why many corporations don't really enjoy keeping on 40+ year old developers who expect to get 5% raises each year when they're not really worth more than the 27-33 year olds who have enough experience to crank out code that works well enough.
I think you have already outlined the solution:
- don't expect 5% raises, or getting more than other developers at the same level. Your salary will plateau, but that's not a bad thing.
- keep up with technology and make sure you don't fall behind.
I know lawyers that start really making money once they hit partner in their firms in their 40s. Or business / financial types who tend to increase salary just because the "pyramid" effects of their existing clients and number of underlings. Doctors have a very regular schedule of raises as do almost all public workers as they gain seniority - teachers, federal and state workers, etc.
Even the typical corporate middle manager will generally be promoted to higher levels with more responsibility.
But software engineers just don't seem to be given the same options, by default. If you're an individual contributor, there are only so many project managers they need, and companies absolutely will not push your salary up by 5% each year once you've hit a plateau in mid 30's (e.g. about $160K in my relatively high COL city).
Twitter Square Dropbox Slack Doordash Coinbase Stripe Robinhood Instacart Brex Affirm Twilio HBO Okta Thumbtack Walmart Confluent
...I could go on, but why?
Anyways, it doesn't really matter if your compensation flatlines at 300-400k before you even turn 30, because then you can just retire at 40 if you want.
> the number of software developers aged 55 to 64 years increased from 87,000 (8.3%) in 2011 to 195,000 (10.7%) in 2019 in the USA.
The number of older software developers MORE THAN DOUBLED in 8 years in absolute numbers, but only increased by 25% in relative terms. That strongly indicates that existing developers weren't pushed out, they just were swamped by new entrants.
There is definitely some drop off around middle age- in 2011 there were 529,000 working "programmers" (computer programmers, software engineers and web developers) in the USA between 35-44. In 2020, there were 400,000. That means about 1 in 4 left the profession (probably more like 1 in 3 to account for new entrants). But that means the vast majority of people programming between 35-44 were still classifying themselves as programmers 10 years later. The drop off from 45-54 to 55-65 was even shallower at 13%.
So the data suggest that despite the mid-age drop off most programmers seem to stay programmers most of their career. I'd expect that many of those exiting "programming" as an occupation are transitioning to management, technical sales, or closely related professions as well, but it wouldn't show up in the data I looked at.
Given that I, being in that 35-44 cohort, am not going to worry to much about how to stay in the profession. I just may ask myself if there is something else I'd like to do as a 2nd act.
Edit- sources: 2011 US CPS- https://www.bls.gov/cps/aa2011/cpsaat11b.htm
2020 US CPS- https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm
the number of software developers aged 55 to 64 years increased from 87,000 (8.3%) in 2011 to 195,000 (10.7%) in 2019 in the USA.
The relevant stat is how many developers aged 45 to 54 in 2011 are STILL EMPLOYED in the field? That's where you see the ageism.
In other industries, not that many people voluntarily abandon a career path at 45 for another industry.
I got a job elsewhere doing elixir and nodejs programming (devops) and haven't looked back. I suggest that people, when told they're too old, just smile and get out of that horrible employer's reach. Life is too short. Plus now I can take my dog to work.
This is the greatest job I've ever had =) Everyone just knows their shit, no one has a need to pad their resume by using the latest tech. We do stuff the boring way, the way that works every time. Stuff is done well the first time, because no one wants to spend their free time fixing broken production code.
No one glorifies long working days or not taking vacations. People have families and other responsibilities and we take that into account.
I did spend the previous 10 years coaching fresh out of school coders, but it's fun not to be the most experienced one in the room for a change.
I haven’t been 35 in a while and I love what I’m doing. I have the greatest job in the world. Furthermore, people keep paying me to do it. I have no intention of stopping for a long time.
My career took me from programming, to architecture roles, to managing projects then managing engineers where I found myself in a position where I never interacted with code. But a couple of years ago I decided to do more programming again and it was no problem at all to get back into it.
I have been programming every day since then and will never regret that move.
If anything, programmers with 10+ years of experience is the most employable there is. There is a certain maturity and wisdom that comes with experience.
I'm in my 40's and still going.
Many developers retire early and become a trainer for young developers.
If you work in a top tech company like apple, microsoft,and etc. since you are 22 until 35 (probably end at a very senior engineer), you probably rack up millions of dollars in your bank and can easily retire.
But I definitely always have, and currently do, work with older devs. Hell, I'm "older", but have coworkers 10 and 20 years older than me. Surprise: we don't work for a start-up.
In short, if you are under 40 and an engineer, you currently probably are massively underestimating how hard it will be to get an IC or junior management job at a quality tech firm once you turn 45 or so. There is a ton of inertia against hiring mid 40 engineers.
There are some what I would call organizationally rational reasons to be wary of hiring engineering talent at mid 40s and above, and some organizationally poor reasons.
On the rational side, you have to remember that most of the industry works on a promote-to-management methodology for engineering ICs. There are a few rare companies that have distinguished engineering type tracks for lifers, but most do not. So, the first thing anyone looking at an engineer in their mid 40s is thinking is: “this person was never a good enough employee to get promoted into management.”
I would say that this is generally a reasonable prior to have while assessing someone, and a hiring manager who is open minded will at least want to understand why that is. Many of the whys mean they might not be a good fit at a growing engineering org.
On the bad Nash equilibrium side of hiring, esp. at a fast growth company, there will be, guaranteed, large team managers in their mid-20s. Some of them will turn out to be stellar leaders, or are stellar leaders. The rest, ... do not want to manage people twice their age. So, this is a suboptimal outcome that comes from pretty normal group hierarchy type tendencies, compounding with the above it can mean even a pretty progressive org can feel principled about not hiring engineering that is ‘too old’.
There is more negative selection bias as well - engineers with good negotiating skills that know how to strategically lever their talent can head into consulting or other other performance based situations and make 10-100x a base salary.
All this adds up to, in my mind, that engineers in their 30s need an exit strategy - and they need to execute on it fast.
The “best” exit strategies, if you have the skill and talents would be: startup co-founder, quant fund partner, high value high leverage consultant, CTO, SVP/Engineering, SVP/Product roles.
The “middle” exit strategies would be engineering management, product management, ‘fixer/number 5 employee/adult for startups’.
The “lower” exit strategies would be single-platform specific engineering skills at large, wealthy, slow-moving companies. DB2 engineering at IBM, Java IC at Oracle, or esoteric tech skills in mid to low value industries (e.g. wordpress guru, adobe plugin developer)
Any of these would, in my estimation provide a nice landing pad through to retirement. But if you miss it, I think the outcome is going to be some harder times scrambling as a consultant / building a small consulting practice trying to maintain standard of living against a whole raft of household expenses as your kids get older. It comes fast.