Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmk | Hacker News Reader

Don't do it. The ageism is heavy in this industry, and you will not get paid the sort of money you are making as a newbie programmer. Second, you will always be on the treadmill of learning new technologies - the whole industry becomes unrecognizable, even to someone who has been in it, every decade or so. That's a very high rate of change to keep up with for someone who has family and interests outside of work.

The lower rungs are populated by naive youngsters coming off college campuses; middle rungs by bored, political players who see the writing on the wall and are trying to schmooze their way into management, or idealists who retain their naivete but will soon realise that they are unemployable. You rarely see people aged 50+ working as programmers (unless they are willing to take massive pay cuts), and for good reason: they have been driven out.

View on HN

I am in my mid fifties and programming steadily for ever. It is a very fun and creative job, enough market demand that I was a good parent. You do have to/get to learn new stuff all the time. There are certain types of green fields programming that is possibly less common now than when I was younger, but I get to teach other people good skills while they crank it out, and I get the knotty problems to solve, or the risky changes that people tend to be leery of. Salary wise, if you are happy with your career I wouldn’t change just for money, but if you like intellectually stimulating work that makes a difference and is in demand, programming is that. There is is some age discrimination but it’s really more salary discrimination. The older you are the more money you earn, and when they do layoffs or whatever, the higher salary makes people targets. People get pissed but none of my friends haven’t gotten a new position.

The parent comment means that when I have a sick kid or a play to see or want to work part time for a few years, I just do it. They whine but keep me.

Programming is a fun activity, but whether it is possible to have a lucrative career doing only programming is debatable. It's usually the case that you can maintain an upward trajectory in your pay only if you shift to the management track, not to mention the increase in your longevity.

Good enough is a feast. Just save a lot and live frugally on the long term things, like houses and cars. I have a fucking tiny house in SV but hey my kids where forced to learn how to share. And when the stock gods bless me I save some and travel some, not buy a bigger house. And maybe buy a new iPad. Happiness is what you get divided by what you expect.

Thank you. I'm glad I posted on this forum as the responses are a departure from the usual 'everyone should learn coding' rhetoric.

100% agree w/ OP here. You would have about a decade or so of work as a programmer and then need to jump to management anyway. Assuming you are pretty smart and can pick programming up, that gives you about eight or nine years of solid work, your comp will be lower than what you can achieve in banking and then you would run smack dab into the programmer wall.

I think a better strategy would be to pick up some light coding on the side, get into positions in your own company working with technologies you like (DeFi or DeFi-adjacent) and then look for an problem/opportunity to create a software company from there.

You can always hire programmers.

recursive has hit the nail on the head when it comes to your time expense (don't forget to account for the opportunity cost here). Programming is a craft. As with any other craft (carpentry, plumbing), you will take a solid few years to get reasonably good at it. This is assuming you get into a good place where you can be an apprentice who has good teachers to learn from. If that's not the case, then you will have to give yourself even more time to become good, let's say six years. Now you are past 40, and are looking at recruiters who are (a) looking to lowball you and (b) expecting you to have a great deal of expertise, both at the same time. Assuming this doesn't completely demoralize you, you are still only at a mid-junior level after all this effort, not to mention the loss of income and career opportunities in banking.

Banking pays well. If you need the income, you are better off sticking to it, because the pay differential and loss of opportunity cost just don't justify getting into this industry.

Better option would still to get fairly deep into the technical underpinnings of your org’s platform, and be the guy who can bridge both sides — deep understanding of the business, and one of the few understanding of the tech stack that enables it.

That’s probably the best place to aim. Few people in your org will accomplish that successfully, so being the one who can will set you apart, help get things done faster (help developers gain domain context, help the business understand how things work under the hood), and keep yourself relevant and useful.

> You rarely see people aged 50+ working as programmers (unless they are willing to take massive pay cuts)

I think this is just exposure, there’s loads - but you aren’t likely seeing them in the places you are in.

It is my understanding that they are to be found in larger numbers in older companies (Cisco comes to mind), and in defense companies. Having worked for a while in SV in a variety of companies, I have seen a small number of people in this age group.

There is also the fact that the profession itself is quite young, so it's possible that there isn't going to be a large enough cohort of programmers to notice, even if ageism were completely absent.

However, your assertion that there are loads is also based on just the exact same thing as my assertion is: anecdata. Where do you see large numbers of older programmers? Outside SV, perhaps?

Yes, I would say most are outside SV. The SV work style isn't a good fit for everyone :).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com