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 tptacek on Friday November 17, 2017 @10:47PM (#15727656)

If you asked a random sampling of 1000+ karma HN users what my specialty was, a bunch of them would say "crypto", but I have 1 semester of college and didn't know CBC mode from CFB mode 8 years ago.

Some fields might be locked up by postgrads (crypto engineering is not one of them, and I doubt language tooling is either). You should check before you invest too much in it. But I would advise against being spooked by academic credentials. Good places to work care more about conversance than credentials, and you get to draft off of all the research work the academics publish before moving into industry to compete with you.

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Re:Is software development really a dead-end job after age 3... by zem on Saturday November 18, 2017 @04:48PM (#15730890)

thanks, it is useful to step back and think about all the other people in the field who don't have phds, or who (like me) don't even have PL backgrounds, but are still happily working on interesting problems. it's just been "different" moving from working on code architecture to working in a field with way more academic than industry representation; i can't help but notice that i can write the code but i'm far from being able to write the papers.

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