Tech careers continue to be remarkably short: 10 years or less if I remember correctly, which is crazy given how much fun programming inherently is. But people aren't stupid and often see the writing on the wall: if you want the big bucks, outside of either being a founder or a Very Special Person at a few Very Special Companies, you have to start managing and playing the political game.

I blame this for the inherent cyclical nature of technology: young kids with no experience come in, get whipped into a frenzy over some technology we've been over before (see Node.js/cooperative multitasking) and then slowly learn the shortcomings of that approach, just in time for the next snake oil to hit.

The irony is that I think that as technology continues to knock down the amount of developers necessary for a given project, older developers who know how to get from point A to point B with the minimal amount of effort will become more valuable in relative terms, so long as they can avoid getting ground down and stay productive. Couple that with another controversial observation of mine: that theoretical technological progress has slowed dramatically in the last decade (implementations are still catching up, but are getting there), and I think we will see small, elite teams of experienced developers become a preferred (or at least common) way to build software.

That's self serving, of course (I'm 35) but I do think it is true.

Glad to see a nod to VSP's at VSC's (as you call them). They do exist after all.

I disagree with your statement about "start managing and playing the political game".

In my group at BigCo which just got canned, the overly political managers with no skills who ruined the product due to their gross incompetence are the ones who have no chance of finding another gig. I feel kind of bad for them, but I'm pretty sure I'll get over it quickly.

Its critical to keep your skills current.

Gross incompetence sometimes kills. Sometimes it doesn't.

I've seen grossly incompetent sharks move up fine at BigCo.

I agree 100% on your last comment, although I think it's worth being a bit skeptical towards flashy new stuff.

Dealing with people as your primary responsibility is inherently political in a company of any size. (Politics as the "competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership.")

In that sense, management is often politics, though good leadership is far more than that.

I've been wondering if the perspective won't shift as the current generation of developers ages. When will HN be the old farts site; will perspective's shift then? More of a hypothetical question.

Second, and this is a broad statement, society is currently in a phase of devaluing the older mind. We're too quick to assume older minds cannot learn as easily, and older minds accept this as fact in a self-fulfilling way. The reality of the situation is that we're living longer, so we'll need to make valuable contributions later in our lives. Tech definitely isn't a mistress for 50+ year-olds, but that's a problem with our culture and not technology.

this is interesting. my father was a tech guy that found himself laid-off a few years back when he hit 50. He hung up the tech boots, started importing foods from his home country to sell to local gourmet shops. Not a huge business but it is the thing he is doing since he was too young to retire. He genuinely enjoys doing it, meeting people and delivering products. It was a complete 180 from what he was doing before. Maybe tech is something inherently for younger people/minds? Maybe techies need to become more open minded with career options as time goes on?

I've worked in a "tech" department with mostly older folks as the youngest person. It was frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I heard "nobody knows how to do that." There were plenty of older COBOL programs, in 10 years they'll be called Java programmers. The COBOL programmers maintained a legacy business application, which was a mammoth beast of obscure rules and uncharted/unknown results. But the system worked and made the company money. Point is, there are still opportunities for older developers although they might not be ideal. Frankly, it was a soul crushing job and I can't believe I'm defending it even in this context.

That's good about your dad tho. I don't know if I'd be able to make that kind of change if I'm ever in his position.

Good for your father! It isn't just tech, everyone in every industry needs to be nimble.

Even if you are a farmer, you might find you need to switch from growing say wheat to corn because market conditions changed.

When you put it that way, as the current generation ages, sounds like you are talking about one or two decades down the line.

Call me crazy, but I think that within two or three decades, its not just going to be "old" programmers who are worried about their jobs. I think that actually sooner than we realize, artificial general super-intelligence will arrive, and make ALL of the humans (at least version 1.0s) obsolete.

Do contract work remotely. Never mention age. Have a killer website or github, and charge a lower fee, or a flat rate. Plenty of people do this.

If you are 55 and have spent your life acquiring new skills you won't have to send out cv's. You will be the guy that people come to that solves hard problems and can deliver - if nothing else because you have seen a lot more and understand more of the big picture than a 25yo.

I disagree. I'll hire a 55 year old JavaScript developer. In fact I have two fifty year old devs: Python/Django and Java/C and everything else that they know, which is a lot. They rock.

That's good of you to be open minded and even better that your older devs rock. The unfortunate reality is that there's age discrimination against elders, especially in tech, even if you're bucking the trend.

"if you're reaching 50 in technology, you need to find an exit scenario. government, management, teaching."

Everyone's goal should be financial independence by 35, or as soon thereafter as you are able to accomplish.

That's old fuddy duddy thinking. I'm 56 and I see plenty of people my age that thought like this and they have little to do now other than play golf an wait for dementia to kick in.

I did things differently, started an ISP business in 1994, worked in a Silicon Valley startup for a year, did some consulting in Australia and went to live in Europe. My life was much more interesting than those people who stuck to the daily grind, I reinvented myself (i.e. kept on learning new things every year) a few times, and according to the latest research, I don't need to worry about dementia for a long time. I might not have a nest egg but I have skills in sofware development, systems admin and dba areas that my few of my peers have, and no younger person has. I intend to keep on working and creating new technology until the end of my days, which if my grandparent's lives are an indication, will be well into my 90's.

"That's old fuddy duddy thinking. I'm 56 and I see plenty of people my age that thought like this and they have little to do now other than play golf an wait for dementia to kick in."

I didn't say anything about quitting work. What you do with your time when you're independent is literally up to you. Stay in your same job, stay in your same field, change careers, study, donate your time or muscle, do something that's strictly personally meaningful, play golf (bleah).

This is very true, In fact on the very first day of my first job I spent time figuring out researching retirement options.

Many people laughed, I told them unless a comet is about hit tomorrow, not worrying about tomorrow doesn't make any financial sense. Because tomorrow always comes and in 99% of the cases to 99% of the people. So 'don't worry about tomorrow' is bad financial advice anybody can give you.

I started planning and investing, five years into my work life now. I have done far better than my other friends who even got paid a lot better than me. I am sure another 5 years and a decade into my career I can achieve the kind of financial independence you describe.

And again as you said, retirement doesn't mean not doing any work. It just means you have sufficient backup to support you if you don't have work.

What do you mean by financial independence?

That you could not work another day and still survive in our economy with reasonable comfort and safety. In an industry like this, that focuses on the new, this will become critical for everyone at some point, although the point where it becomes critical will vary for each person. Hopefully everyone will be employable and viable as long as they want, but shit happens.

@silverstorm, if you you do it purely from saving, it will be a hard slog, but if you look at typical salaries thrown around, you can save most of your salary and get to your 1.5 to 2 mil at 35, or 40, or 45 or 50.

If you invest aggressively and carefully, you might make it sooner.

If you change your mindset so that your real job is to use the resources that your day job gives you, to achieve the goals of your real job (farming your resources to become financially independent), you have a better chance.

If you don't work toward financial independence on purpose, it's not going to happen. Ever. But it could. If you would.

Disclaimer: I didn't figure this out until it's probably too late.

It is hard to believe anyone could get to $1 million from pure savings of income by the age of 35. If you work from 22 to 35 that is only 13 years. That would be saving an average of over $75,000 per year. Most developers won't even make $75k in take home pay for most of that 13 years.

I didn't have $1 million of gross income (according to the SS administration) until I was over 40. I worked for myself for a lot of those years as both an independent contractor and while starting companies. Most of my savings were eliminated over that time because of startup failures and just general economic bad times.

If you can get to $1 million of savings by the age of 40 by just income and investments, you are doing very well. Few will manage it. For me to have even half that saved would have required that I do nothing but work for BigCorp for 20 years. A fate that I would not wish on any entrepreneurial person.

Its not just take home salary every month.

Let me tell you I'm 27 and from India, I am a native Bangalore resident. I am sure similar options I'm going to tell you now exist in the US.

The first thing you must do when you get money in your hands is know how much you want to spend and how much want to save. In my case I see, I can spend around 40%. The remaining 60% goes in to my savings. Then you need to figure out a way to convert 60% of the saving to investments. Gold, endowment insurance, real estate etc. There are many options, the earlier you start the better.

Of course this requires discipline. To give you an example, I don't have credit card till today's date as a principle. If your routinely save and invest then over time you can save yourself a fortune.

I don't think that's even possible in US tech unless you start your own company or hit a startup jackpot. One medical crisis could wipe you out if you didn't have insurance, and getting insurance is more difficult and expensive as you age.

In other words, the average salary of a Bay Area engineer is something like $20k, if you consider the fact that you'll work for 10 years at $80-100k and then get laid off and will be unable to find a job for the next 50 years until you hit retirement age.

What a wonderful industry we work in.

Good heavens. You need a good 1.5-2mil in capitol if we assume modest 3% returns on your money, if you want to live at $40k/year. How can everyone stockpile 1.5-2mil by the time they are 35?

More importantly, what will happen to our economy if everyone stops working at 35?

@everyone, I guess there are a lot of reasons to not try.

It's always been my goal. Well, I've tried various ways to get there that haven't worked, but I haven't given up, even at 53.

I'm a little surprised too at how much pushback you're getting on this. Isn't financial independence part of the point of all this entrepreneurship we talk about around here?

Yes, in fact, there are. There are any number of things that are more important/fulfilling/interesting to fill your head with and make life decisions based on.

what do you mean by survive? people want to keep growing and doing bigger and better things. You could save up some money, move to a 3rd world country and hole yourself in a shack for a couple bucks a day to live out the rest of your days if you really wanted to. I believe the question of financial independence is not as important as finding a path and being forced to pivot because of your age.

It's a tricky time to be job hunting at 55 no matter what industry. But there are plenty of companies that are not hot-shot startups with all young people. There's plenty of offices and businesses with older people working there and a 20-something isn't going to be any more appealing to them than a 55 year old pro, as long as the salary is competitive.

It's more like 40, 50 is far too late.