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Comment by asdfman123 | Hacker News Reader

I feel bad for people who aren't saving and investing a decent chunk of their income as a dev.

I think you can be a productive dev well into advanced age, but I think once you get to 40-ish the career becomes more like treading water until you retire.

And if you're the kind of person who doesn't like meetings and wants to go back to being an IC, you might not have that option anymore because you can't take a paycut.

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It's a tricky thing to think about. I'm very near to 30, after 10 years or so kind of in a software career, but will be entering my 30s with no money saved or invested. Not because I'm a poor spender, quite the contrary, but because I've lost jobs and burnt out, leaving me in the absolutely comical interviewing gauntlet for over a year, multiple times. During this time, I've just drained my savings completely supporting myself. The way things look, unless I find a way to keep a job of any kind, I'll just continue this rollercoaster of making about $30k, going to zero, and restarting. Someone who's been in a low to middle income non-tech job for the last decade—with the same spending habits—will have made more money in total by this point, and have more to show for it. The other likelihood is I'll just find a way to embrace this flux and ride it as well as I can.

I feel bad for people who believe that age beats talent.

GP did not say this.

I didn't reply to GP, did I?

My GP.

It's literally in the second line.

Age doesn't beat talent but experience can. Not only that, but you can be experienced and still have all the talent you had when you were young.

There is a big tendency for young, talented devs to assume they are the smartest person and/or the best coder in the room because up until now they've always been (even in college), but at some point in their progression that stops being true. I'll even go so far as to suggest that if you are still the best coder in the room you should probably go out and find a better room.

There is a correlation between experience and talent. That's my point. Everyone crying about being unemployable as an engineer over 40 is fooling themselves. 90% of the software dev jobs out there are not at FAANG companies, and at the end of the day, clients and corporations care about getting shit done. The guy with the 20 year track record beats the fresh graduate the vast majority of the time.

FAANG companies hire old people too. I’m nearly 50 and have 30 years experience in the industry and feel quite well valued at my large cloud factory. The opportunities for learning never stop and my decades of stepping in shit in various ways is seen as a thick callused hide of wisdom. :D

please do an AMA, your career advice would be super helpful

Haha I can’t tell if this is sarcasm but I definitely don’t think I’m AMA-worthy.

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