I'm 40, so one foot in the grave in the tech world, yet I have managed to keep myself marketable by not being afraid to jump in and learn new things when needed, just like a college kid, but with experience. Maybe I'm wasting my time spending hours learning Vue or Kubernetes for the future but if I had stayed "safe" developing WPF calendar apps and cursing the new stuff I'd be dead in the water. And taking on new positions and companies puts me out of my comfort zone and teaches me new things.

Everyone's mileage varies on this of course.

I’ve also noticed that many of the (s/w) engineers who’ve survived way past that certain age tend to be of a very different personality type than those who “retire early”, and their persona has more in common with the average non-software engineer of comparable experience. Of course the huge bias on the recruiting side, and the fact that a majority of apps are basic CRUD type stuff fuelled primarily by cheap VC cash, that have no real use for 20 years experience, exacerbates this situation. But I wonder as the industry matures, and the proportion of apps with serious scale possibly grows, if the need for engineers “past their prime” wouldn’t gradually rise.

Just a thought...

Boy does that sound familiar. I’m fine financially, but mainly due to luck. Tried looking for work before family medical issues took higher priority, but if getting a new job had been as easy as I had expected before the sabbatical, I wouldn’t have been available to help the family.

I still don’t know how much of my problem was down to me vs how much was down to looking in Berlin when all of my previous work had been in the UK.

I'm pretty sure you're on thin ice with this one...

Not only that, developing software is generally a "slow" task, not constant decision making in spans of milliseconds like in a "fast" sport you mentioned. If you want to compare, try a "slow" sport like golf, does your observation still hold true?

In engineering tasks you also gain a lot of productivity (at least if your metrics aren't crap, might be often a problem here) from years and decades of building up experience and knowledge. Moreover this doesn't get lost to a huge degree if you pause 1-2 years, not like physical training which goes away quickly and is hard to build up again.

I think what could play a role here is that older people may often be less focused on the job because that focus shifts to other things in life like e.g. family.

FWIW I'm not talking out of my hat here, I "played" a very thought intensive sport in my younger day and was one of the top guys in the US on any given day. I still have ridiculously quick decision times and the concentration of a Monk with ADD when I drive, But there's no way my bod could compete with a my former self of 20 years ago. I'm in pretty good shape now but I'm not a World class athlete anymore.

Tennis or sports coach? A typical age is much older.

With any decline in focus it is important to see a therapist and find out if you are really suffering from depression. It is stunningly common for people to mistake the symptoms of depression for the symptoms of aging.

The only advantage we (younger people) have is energy and fewer responsibilities (take care of kids, grandsons, medical issues). But we are still reckless and have many unknowns unknowns compared to the older folk.

Did you mean, if you want to stay an engineer as you age, then you have to take less risks because it will be difficult to get that next job as an engineer? Do you also mean, that it actually becomes more likely that you will be forced to start a business if you fall out of the engineering career due to age / circumstance, because it is difficult to be hired as one?

I'm curious because, it seems like the older you get but are still capable of working, if you are unemployed, the higher the likelihood that you will be forced to take more risks than less to find the employment or make a business.

I have heard that you are more likely to be successful starting a business if you are older, not younger [1] [2] [3]. I'm sure it's not true for everyone, but that might make sense if you are unable to work in the normal job market but have experience and ability.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/201...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgedeeb/2015/04/16/does-age-...

[3] https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/59jeex/the-most-successf...

The reason you need to take less risks is because your ability to execute a task that you were used to executing before is reduced due to the ageing process. For example, you need to take longer breaks and sooner. In other words, your full speed to work goes down. So to compensate, you have to be more careful with the work you undertake. For example, it's easier to supervise someone else on a task you are familiar with instead of doing yourself at your lower efficiency.

In a sense, your conclusion about needing to take more risks is true. But the risk is being taken by your oerganization in betting on you to be able to execute on the task you have set out to do. What I am talking about is personal risk, that you take in your choice of what you will do. That choice needs to get a little more conservative as a you age so as to give some margin for error that you probably didn't need as much before.

The second part of your question regarding how things will turn out regarding whetehr you work for an org or yourself is more circumstantial than anything else.

The third observation seems to make sense regarding success of business as a function of age of founder. As you age, you choose your work better because you have more experience.

> your full speed to work goes down

> your lower efficiency

Do you have sources on this? On its surface, it sounds like fairly ageist thinking. I'm not young, but I don't feel like I've slowed down at all. In fact, my experience keeps me from making as many mistakes as when I was younger.

I know folks, considerably older than I, who are faster still at the things with which they have experience, and quick to pick up new things, too.

I don't think this is true. It might be more true if the task involves learning a lot of completely new stuff, but there's very little completely new stuff - experience helps in learning most of what comes out these days.

Execution is sped up more by doing the right thing than doing things quickly. Just like typing speed is not normally the limiting factor, speed qua speed isn't what makes things slow. I've seen younger devs work very fast in the wrong direction especially when they are lacking in code design and debugging skills.

Interesting that you mention breaks. Breaks are opportunities to get your head up. Taking fewer breaks will increase the probability of spending too much time on the wrong road.

That said, this also works for permanent jobs, so if you're struggling to find those then maybe you are out of luck.

That's honestly the question when it comes to this type of thing, there are so many different skillsets and not everyone can find contracts as easily as they'd hope; or it's not as reliable as they need for their life.