Is 42 too old
Considering making a move to software dev. I’ve heard a lot about ageism. Also that the market for jr devs is brutal. Am I wasting my time?
Is there some specific area in software engineering that you are drawn to or some application are? There are many applications fields of software development and I think in some large fields it will not be worth trying to compete with junior developers.
Typically, I don't think of software dev as an "industry" in itself, unless you're talking about dev tools etc, but that many industries depend on strong software. Your best bet is to target software problems related to your prior job. This way, your skillsets complement each other. You may not be the best at either side, but your ability to integrate the two could be a strong pt.
42 is probably too old for the startup world, which is where the discussions on HN tend to focus, but that is really just one slice of the industry. There are a ton of jobs at larger non-tech companies, where ageism is not as much of a problem. It is slower-paced, lower-paid, more boring... and perfectly acceptable if all you are looking for is a solid stable job.
The bigger challenge is the "junior dev" problem. There is some harsh reality there. But you can probably fight through that if you look for software work in whatever industry you are coming from, so that your couple decades of prior experience is relevant to the work being done by any team you would join.
Software dev as a tool in your toolbox to fix business problems is a superpower and will actually earn you decent money.
(also, if you use software on your own then it doesn't matter how good you are or whether you conform to any given day's "best practices". Your client pays to get their problem solved, they don't care if it's solved by duct-tape and hot glue)
When you move over to BigTech, you come out of school making over twice the median household wage and can easily make well over a quarter million a year in total comp within 3-5 years.
I get it. I have been working in cloud consulting for a little over 5 years now with three of those working (full time) at BigTech. Now I’m a staff architect at a 3rd party consulting company working very closely with sales as part of my job.
But to say that you can’t make money as a software dev in the US is not supported by facts.
And then let’s also not glamorize independent consultants. Most don’t make the eye popping salaries and working for a consulting company, money appears in my account whether I have a project or not on vacation or sick. I have a whole sales organization, legal, accounting, a large collection of people that the resourcing department that can pull in for larger projects to work under me etc behind me even though I’m the tip of spear.
But for the other bottom 80-90% outside of those industries SWE is essentially the modern version of an assembly line worker with way more stress, responsibilities and bullshit.
It’s unlikely our aspiring dev here is going to land a high-paying position right away. They’re gonna have to grind it out at one of those lower-paying companies first and build up their experience, and maybe after 5-7 years actually join one of those higher-paying jobs.
This assumes of course that those jobs still exist in that time and the pay situation hasn’t gotten worse. Turns out the world has built a very high tolerance for shitty, low-quality software, and both AI and outsourced workers can churn it out much cheaper than our upcoming dev can.
If the author here is considering investing 10 years of their life into a new career, I’d rather have them do so in something that has higher earning potential and resistance to outsourcing.
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
As I said in another comment though, I’m 51 with 30 years of professional experience, 10 years before that as a hobbyist, a reputation, a network, a stint at BigTech, etc.
I tell anyone who wants to get into software development at even 30 as a junior that they would be better off in product management, sales, customer facing solution architecture, etc.
How to do that from ground zero? I have no idea.
Yesterday I came across some obscure project on Github that was opensourced by what looks like a large company selling "insights" and risk analysis data to the insurance sector. Out of curiosity I looked at their careers page and all the tech roles were either in Poland or India.
The scary thing is, we all know how "good" Indian outsourcing is... but Eastern European outsourcing is actually good from my experience, so I'm not even sure "regular enterprise dev" will remain competitive for long.
But I have found working with LatAm coworkers to be an amazing experience.
What I first found frustrating about Indian developers in India wasn’t that they weren’t necessarily bad developers, they were afraid to speak up or go outside the lines. I had to beg a few to give me honest critical feedback when I was an architect at startup when I realized they were following my in hindsight bad guidance and they knew better.
My current LatAm coworkers - even those who are a lot less senior than me will tell me (politely) when my shit stinks.
I'm curious to hear what's your definition of "life changing"?
Salaried tech compensation in Europe grew quite a lot over the last 10+ years. Still behind US, but no longer by as much as before.
Back in 2005, 2010, and even 2015 - companies were benchmarking salaries locally (and even down to that specific country). With FAANG opening up shops in EU, all other bigger tech companies started to benchmark compensation somewhat globally.
I know plenty of European software engineers that got a house with 30 years mortgage, and (with salary, RSUs and bonuses) paid it off in <10 years.
Granted, cost of real estate is now 3x compared to 10-15 years ago (other costs are also bigger, but not 3x). From what I've seen it's the same just about anywhere in Europe.
So if you just got a mortgage now, it will take longer.
But still - there's usually enough salary left (even after spending on traveling with 25+ vacation days) to put loads of money into rainy day funds, expensive hobbies, as well as investments/FIRE.
Most other sectors are not really close.
I am too dumb to get a FAANG job but it boggles my mind when people downplay the salary you make at FAANGs. It is more than life changing for anyone especially compared to rest of the options in software world. Am I taking crazy pills here ?
As a diagnosed ADHD person myself - I think you should spend time to get that ADHD diagnosis Even without meds, stuff like CBT helps.
Anyway - not sure if they are downplaying FAANG salary, or its more about the ROI (long hours, stress ...etc)?
I'm basically at European equivalent of FAANG, and I don't see myself doing US version even if it's double the money.
The latter. I'm not saying FAANG salary is nothing (or that SWE salary is nothing). I'm arguing that the juice ain't worth the squeeze, FAANG or not (FAANG comes with extra challenges, but even the basic SWE job has a baseline level of unique challenges to deal with... the interviewing/hiring process being one of them for example).
Furthermore, the amount of juice appears to be decreasing every day with things like RTO, layoffs, beliefs in AI replacing everyone any day now, and the ever decreasing standard of software quality, meaning AI may actually replace a lot of us - not because it's any good at software, but because once you have a monopoly you have no reason to produce good software.
Not to mention a FAANG job isn't for everyone, and it's not really a matter of dumbness. You need to like dealing with the problems they usually deal with (heavy focus on distributed systems - ie. "just use Postgres" doesn't work at that scale), politics, working with other people who just optimized their interview process rather than the actual job, and so on. It has its downsides, for which the salary and perks needs to make up for.
The world is increasingly converging into a state where your absolute salary won't matter, as any increase will just make your landlord and/or the taxman richer, FAANG or not.
Just an example: sales roles generally have commission-based compensation that scales with the amount of effort you put in and actually rewards high-performers.
In comparison, the "reward" for effort in a salaried SWE job is more work and to get your token 5% raise early if you're really lucky. And that's after you go through the insane recruitment & interviewing processes.
The SWE salary income might sound high at first glance when you're young and fresh but tops out quickly (and of course that top end has been significantly eroded by inflation), much lower than other roles.
This of course all relative geographically but we're certainly very well compensated compared to other industries.
There could be a big spread from smaller tech companies, and governments/police/military/etc that pay low even for tech positions.
So actually I would be really curious to meet/talk to someone that took a tech job in say police/military or such.
Most devs are probably in the top 20-30% band making tech a relatively "normal" (but good) salary in the local region.
I could be entirely wrong though :)
So the question is "why you if I can hire a 23 year old with possibly more energy, less baggage (most likely they can work longer hours and not have family/kids to worry about etc). That's possibly ageism but when there is a choice b/w an entry level Software Dev who is 23 vs who is 42, who do you think will get priority ?
Now, if you can differentiate yourself where your age becomes a plus and not minus, then we are talking. For example, one can assume you have a lot of real world experience, you have worked in tough conditions with real customers (whatever industry). Can you use that to your advantage and make a better case ? Then you can do it.
It does pay off though and I am delighted when colleagues approach me with a difficult problem to crack. I never take on formal ownership of the problem though, but if I do crack it, my input is well documented (and bonus points: I learned something new).
Cracking some hard problems has earned me a good reputation among the senior engineers & engineering management, and hopefully my future career will benefit from these relationships.
My value proposition is the “Joel Spolsky” value play “I’m smart and get things done” and I can talk them through my history of doing so. That can be either supporting sales by flying out to a customer site or being on a zoom call, leading a large cross discipline implementation, hands on keyboard going from an empty AWS account to a full architecture, deployment pipeline, and an ETL or online backend process with hands on development. They get professionalism not passion.
Don’t get me wrong, I am up to date on the latest back end tech in my niche, Gen AI and know when to use traditional machine learning techniques even though I’m going to defer to the specialists for ML implementations that can’t be done with managed services.
But what I am not going to do is work crazy hours.
I enjoy researching, building and solving interesting problems out of personal curiosity. There has never been any pressure on me to find a solution - many of the challenges are sometimes years old and teams just lived with the discomfort.
Sharing a possible way to remove this discomfort is often welcomed by the long-timer engineers out of curiosity to learn more - it's been a thorn in their side for ages!
Seems pretty ageist to even put the question that way. One could absolutely build up a list of specific criteria that often are more true with younger people, but if you don't articulate those criteria and base decisions upon them, and not the age of the candidate, that is straight-up ageism.
There are of course some companies who value and capitalize on the experience of older people and have good work-life balance... just don't expect that in your average JS/blockchain/AI shop which is all tech seems to be currently.
The path can be tough at the beginning, but if you truly enjoy it, you’re not wasting your time, you’re investing in a new stage of your life.
And this is just my personal opinion: I believe a team should be as diverse as possible. The more different perspectives, the better. A 22-year-old junior doesn’t see things the same way as a 42-year-old junior, and both are valuable and perfectly compatible.
Been happy ever since working / coding away.
I would keep in mind that a lot of software dev talk on the internet revolves around FAANG, and start ups. They get the most lip service but they're not the majority of the work / companies.
Younger people are more likely to accept orders without push back. Accept lower pay. Work 60+ hr/week for crunch time, etc.
Depends on the employer of course. Google employs an 80+ year old Ken Thompson.
If Stanford Computer Science graduates aren't landing jobs.
And even 'AI Engineer' roles are hard to come by. I'd be wary.
I’m not dismissing Gen AI at all, I’ve used it for three non chatbot projects so far and it’s made some really previous hard problems easy. But it was just a newer much easier tool in my tool belt that could have been done (probably better) with traditional ML techniques with much more development effort and maintenance overhead.
Problem is: it works. Being against it just puts you at a disadvantage, so enjoy your new "AI Engineer" title. Call yourself Senior AI Engineer while you're at it.
I dream of never using one of these cursed dystopia machines again.
Run away from computers
I think there is only 1 person on my team under 40.
If you are in your 40s and 50s and have the experience “you should” for your age, up to date on technology and have built a great network, the world is your oyster.
If none of that is the case, getting a job as a junior developer at any age is a shit show right now. Hell it’s a shit show for people with experience when every job opening gets hundreds of applications within the first day.