I don't think it's the age, it's the other life obligations.

In my early 20's I was in college. Graduated in 2008 in to the recession and was lucky to have _any_ job. Spent all of my nights learning coding.

In my mid-late 20's, starting in 2011, I finally got a crappy job with a pay cut in tech (sort of) doing ad operations. I worked hard and spent the evenings getting better at Java so I could use the Dart For Publishers SDK to automate things I hated doing at work (inadvertently helped the company make about a million extra bucks that year, I later realized).

In my early 30's, I got married, changed countries, became a Technical Account Manager, studied Python and German in my free time, and eventually became a dev for a video game company.

In my (our, now) mid-30's, we had a kid, and now I spend my free time on that and house repair, etc. I still like coding but after dinner, bath, bedtime stories, maybe 15 minutes chatting with the spouse, and then other chores, I'm going to bed (before anyone asks, I watch 0 TV and do very little by way of social networks).

I have a colleague who's in his late 20's, no kids, and he's on Slack all. the. time. He talks about stuff he worked on (for work, not for hobbies) over the weekend. I don't think I produce as much as him, to be honest. Makes me a bit anxious about where I stand - hard to compare my 40 hours to effectively his whole life.

I think I need a plan B.

(Related discussion - and the article is 10 years old so the young'uns then are getting in to their 30's now) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9361580

You may want to consider looking into academia. Everyone knows the pay isn't as good, but that can be an advantage. Academia loses (or never gets) a lot of talented engineers due to the pay, lack of fancy perks, etc. There actually are perks though. Also, for some, the sense of personal fulfillment depending on the field or project you're working on can be of significant value (just not monetary). There's also the fear that academic jobs are solely dependent on grants, which is true in some cases, but there are positions that are funded by the institution itself. Also, I wonder how much more "job security" the typical person really does have in industry. Regardless, It's something to think about.

What kind of academia? Because the traditional PhD -> post-doc -> prof track is absolutely not a good place for work/life balance. Or are you talking about being a programmer for a university?

The job market for professors in CS right now is great. No need for a postdoc and only a few pubs will get you multiple offers from R1 univerisities in the US.

(I'm a CS prof.)

Wow, that's incredible. I didn't get that impression from the CS PhD students I've met, but I'll take your word for it. But you'd still need a PhD, no? And grad school is definitely not a great place for work/life balance.

Grad school (and tenure-track) isn't considered great for work/life balance, but it seems mostly self-induced. If I had limited myself to 40 hours a week in grad school I think I would have been just as successful.

Anyone I know that wanted a tenure-track position did get one (and had options). I graduated from an unranked department and had a positive experience on the market.

Yes, I was referring to programmer (or related) for a university.

My experience with academia was sheer poison. My advisor lied, accused me of cheating with no evidence, and patented the ideas his students generated. Appreciate the comment but... No.

Did you move to Germany/Austria/Switzerland by any chance?

The colleague you described who has no life except work rings very familiarly with my time there.

In my experience, wherever I went, there was always a no-lifer on the team(no kids/wife/girlfriend, no sports/hobbies) who used to answer emails after midnight and push to git on a Sunday hoping to get that pat on the back from the managers. Career advancements were difficult as at your performance review he would be used as the benchmark.

No actually, I just really like the language and the nations that speak them. Could imagine perhaps living there someday (I'm a sucker for Fachwerk architecture, if nothing else!) Though I hear it's hard to make friends, which is an issue since I'm already old, as discussed.

I live in Ireland, which was one of the easier places re: visa, cultural integration, language, etc. and it's been pretty good to me all things considered.

Surely the tradeoff here is that, provided a company treats you okay, you're more likely to stick around than that colleague (if he's that driven then he's surely constantly looking for new opportunities?) and an employee with a few years knowledge of the codebase is generally worth a lot more than a super skilled newbie.

Depends on the area though, I guess. Video game companies seem to have a preference for working people into the ground.

Oh, I left the video game company. It actually wasn't a bad gig, tbh.

Cut down your work week if you can afford it. If you can't afford it, change your spending and saving habits so you can afford it in the future. With the spare time you can focus on interesting pet projects or an interesting side hustle.

That's the plan. Just bought a super cheap house to help enable this.

Government agencies require developers, and it’s full of older coders at least in my country (Sweden). Lots of benefits such as long vacations. Only problem is they move slow as all hell and they have decades of legacy, which drives the younger developers away because they want to move fast and break things.

Unfortunately I don't think it matters that much. Maybe at one point you could live an alternative life in the seedy part of town if you didn't have kids. But there aren't many alternatives any more.

We're trying to adjust our life so we could live on well under the median income of needs must. In this case it meant leaving the city for a small town about an hour away. Houses are cheap as chips, though.

No, these lists just celebrate the outliers - people who extraordinarily successful. It can't be everyone's goal to make it onto one of these lists, because there are billions of people in the world. The vast majority of us are also fumbling through life, and a few are lucky enough to achieve lots of success. They make it onto these lists because they have an unusual and interesting story. I think the word "success" has become overloaded with some insane expectations, especially in media, or in Silicon Valley circles. I don't think it makes sense to label these writers or entrepreneurs as simply "successful". They're the very top of the field, just like an Olympic gold medalist.

This list is about some of the most popular writers who were over the age of 35 when they became famous. But I was talking to a successful writer on Reddit. They weren't super famous, but they made a good living from writing and selling some YA and fiction. They weren't overnight millionaires, but they did end up starting a small publishing company. They made a solid living, and they were able to raise a family and save for retirement. I don't think they made it to the top of any bestseller lists, but I would still call them a very successful writer.

This is also one of the reasons why I like the Indie Hackers community [1], and also the SaaS podcast [2]. I really like reading stories about people who are building SaaS products that eventually make it $100k per year in revenue. I find these stories much more interesting and relevant than reading about huge fundraising rounds, or the history of Uber and Facebook. You have a much greater chance of success with a smaller sustainable company instead of a crazy moonshot. But you won't get featured in TechCrunch, and you won't make it onto any of these 30 under 30 lists.

[1] https://www.indiehackers.com

[2] https://saasclub.io/saas-podcast

I think it's a reaction to the published lists of people who are under something like 35.

NB Regarding the "fumbling through" feeling, I'm 53 and I think one of the comforting things about getting older is realising that it's not just you but that, in general, everyone is pretty much making life up as they go along :-)

> everyone is pretty much making life up as they go along :-)

This has also been my observation at 30. I've worked with people all ages and people of all statures and most people are just doing what they think is right and not much is based on facts. Even high ranking people at fortune 500 companies are just doing what feels right to them and often their success is more related to people below them working their asses off than their leadership. The only difference between people who are in control and people who don't, is often that the former don't have a realistic view of why they're successful.

And, as a nuance, there are of course people who are really good at what they do and that have a lot of knowledge. A lot of people, however, just were really lucky (or really good at networking) to get where they are. Even some Nobel Prize winners just got lucky:

http://www.physics.org/featuredetail.asp?id=71

At 53 also and a number of career reboots, as well as staying at home raising kids, my observation is the same about the making life up as they (we) go along. Conversations with friends who cashed out at 7 figures after reaching very high levels in very large corps just affirms the view for me. Pretty much everyone appears to be winging it. There is a definite comfort and freedom in this realization.

Yes, I think most people would consider 35 too late to stop one career (where you might already be making something of yourself, but aren't satisfied) and start another (that you might actually love).

With reasons ranging from too risky in terms of expected cost/benefit, to you can't learn as quickly, to family obligations won't give you the time or energy required.

I personally think the learning speed one is bunk -- even if your brain slows down a little (debatable), it seems more than made up for by experience in how you learn most efficiently, on top of general life experience.

So lists like this help remind you that you still can, if you're so inclined. For more inspiration in the creative direction (e.g. writing like in this list), see particularly the well-known book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/01431...

Right, let's say you are 35, you already changed careers once. If you have a family and you aren't rich, you are stuck, that's it, your life is over.

And if you are not? Let's say you got to med school, and let's say everything goes PERFECTLY. You are still 47 with $200,000 in student loan debt, what was the point?

Or you to the army because you always wanted to be a Green Beret, now you are 41 with your career dead and a path into management.

You can still take risks, like starting a business, but now the cost is very real. The question of "When do I start living. What's the grind actually for?" starts to become very real.

>Every rotation around the sun my opinion is solidified that we're all just wingin' it, no matter the age and success can happen whenever.

One of the most impactful realizations I've had in my entire life is that, with _incredibly_ few exceptions, everyone is fumbling. All the time. Regardless of age. Some people are just better at hiding it than others.

After I was able to fully internalize that, life got easier. I stopped putting so much pressure on myself. It became "okay" if I didn't know how to deal with a situation, or felt completely overwhelmed. I'm still fumbling, but I've come to terms with it and I feel much better as a result.

If I ever feel really confident I've "figured out" life, that's when I'll get really worried.

> Is 35 normally considered too old to make something of yourself by society?

By Western Society norms, yes. But there's no reason to take notice of what other people around you expect you to be doing at a given age. If you feel the need to learn something new, or branch out in a different direction - do it! Or at least start planning to do it.

I'm currently on my 5th career - some may see that as a failure to commit, irresponsible even. I consider it a welcome challenge - a chance to prove myself (again) and an opportunity to grow while having some fun along the way.

> And when speaking to friends older than me, the majority seem to still be fumbling through as well.

This information is only released to people after they pass their 40th birthday; leaking such information to younger people is strictly forbidden!

Writers actually tend to be rather slow starters. You don't hear about a mathematician's "juvenilia", but a search on Amazon for "juvenilia" turns up quite a few--quite a lot of Jane Austen, but also Charlotte Bronte, W.H. Auden, and Leigh Hunt.

> I don't understand

Have you not noticed the constant barrage of stories like "21-year-old sells billion-dollar company!" or "Teenager discovers new medical breakthrough!"? Or the dozens of "30 under 30" lists?

This seems to be a response to that.

Everybody is either copying something someone else made up, or making it up as they go along. Most people only try the second strategy when the first one fails.

In regards to this article, I would not be at all surprised if the average age of first publishing for successful authors was well above 35. Is apparently around 45, for successful startup founders.

'Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45' - https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

I really appreciate career changes and variety in my friends because it keeps it fresh in my mind just how much we're all wingin' it. There's something liberating about that feeling.

The market seems to reflect that age is a valuable attribute for entrepreneurs[1], and I'd be curious to know the average age of published authors, composers, mathematicians, and so on; particularity when it comes to works that society deems important long term. But anecdotally I'd say that an individual's future potential is more interesting to society at large, based on prevalence in the media and the social cachet of hanging around with people in the 30 under 30 crowd.

I also think that success is too broad a term to characterize generally, but if you think about different opportunities and pressures in each logical window of time in an average person's life then it should be apparent that different varieties of success are more probable for each timeframe, even if chance contributes on an equal basis with any other personal attribute.

In any case, being comfortable with wingin' it is probably itself a favored characteristic.

-- https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

I turned 28 this year and I feel the exact same way.

I’m floating along okay, but I’m deathly afraid of dev jobs and employers locking me out for being too old or not having some TED talk in my field.

You’re afraid of being too old for a dev job at... 28? Is that a thing? There’s no way that’s a thing.

And he's probably never even seen Logan's Run!

It's the idea that if you haven't done anything notable in your first 35 years, maybe you don't have what it takes. It's the "test of time".

If you look into the biographies of successful people, "winging it" is very much not an apt description.

>I don't understand: Is 35 normally considered too old to make something of yourself by society?

Possibly. For instance, Einstein was essentially done by his 30s.