Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

Re:Is software development really a dead-end job after age 3... by mwfunk on Friday November 17, 2017 @06:27PM (#15726842)

This is excellent advice. I would add that another key ingredient is never resting on your laurels, and continually learning and improving. Successful people (and companies) often get to a comfortable place where they can get away with doing the same thing over and over, but the money keeps rolling in. It can be very tempting to step off the gas and just enjoy the fruits of your labors for a while.

Some people get to this point and never step back on the gas, because it seems like things are going to be great forever. Once people get too comfortable, it's only a matter of time until it bites them.

IMO it's important to continually reinvent yourself throughout your career, to keep things interesting, but also to always put you in the best position to take whatever the next step is. If you wait until it's time to take that next step before figuring out where you want to go, it's too late.

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Re:Is software development really a dead-end job after age 3... by JimboOmega on Friday November 17, 2017 @06:45PM (#15726920)

So... I agree that growing constantly is important.

But I don't agree that having constant side projects and learning the new cool language/framework du jour is necessarily valuable.

I think that there's just too many technologies out there, moving too fast, to be proficient in a significant fraction of them, even if you invest all your time in learning them.

I think there's more value in learning how to do engineering well in one language than learning how to do basic stuff in 20 of them. Because the skills and knowledge of going deeper transfer much better than knowing syntax, etc - stuff you can always pick up for the next job once you know what it is.

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